AS A CHILD, I couldn't engage in prolonged activities outdoors without bouts of constricted breathing, irritated eyes, wheezing, and sneezing. My parents tried various remedies to relieve the symptoms, including a number of medications, inhalers, and vaporizers. I even tried breathing through steaming washcloths. But these options only provided temporary relief, if that. The hope was that I would outgrow the problem.
I didn't. But I did begin to attend a Christian Science Sunday School, where I learned that God is good and all-powerful. So although the asthma symptoms persisted off and on through high school, by this time I'd stopped using medications or inhalers to treat them. My growing understanding of God and my relationship to Him was helping me see that I could pray instead. And rather than just coping or confronting the problem over and over again, I began to realize that I could live a life free of asthma. I could be healed.
The turning point came during my junior year of college. I had just started a prestigious internship at a major metropolitan TV station, and I was living on my own for the first time. It was a great opportunity to prove my abilities and make good contacts for launching my career after college. I needed to be active and alert, and taking sick days was simply not an option.
Then one weekend, just after I'd started the job, I had a severe asthma attack. I could hardly get out of bed and had to stop frequently to catch my breath. The last thing I wanted was for this condition to affect my job performance. Looking back, I think the combination of being on my own for the first time and my growing trust in prayer gave me a strong resolve to buckle down and pray. I wanted to see an end to this issue once and for all.
The first thought that occurred to me was that "man's extremity is God's opportunity." I decided to dig into my Bible and Science and Health without stopping until I was completely healed. It wasn't long before I came across a simple account of one of Mary Baker Eddy's healings that would change my life.
Here's what it said: "A woman, whom I cured of consumption, always breathed with great difficulty when the wind was from the east. I sat silently by her side a few moments. Her breath came gently. The inspirations were deep and natural. I then requested her to look at the weather-vane. She looked and saw that it pointed due east. The wind had not changed, but her thought of it had and so her difficulty in breathing had gone. The wind had not produced the difficulty. My metaphysical treatment changed the action of her belief on the lungs, and she never suffered again from east winds, but was restored to health." Science and Health, pp. 184–185.
It suddenly hit me that what I'd been suffering from all these years was only a belief that some outside influence could affect my ability to breathe. Just like the woman, who, consciously or not, accepted that the direction of the wind affected her breathing, I was accepting that certain airborne particles or natural chemicals influenced my breathing.
For the first time I understood: It was only my accepting—or not decidedly rejecting—the widely held beliefs about asthma that allowed my thought, and so my body, to be influenced by the symptoms that went along with those beliefs.
But this was only half of it. I realized I couldn't just deny the power of another influence. I also had to consciously grasp the truth about myself as God's creation. I saw that all of creation must interact harmoniously. No element of God's wholly good creation could be at odds with any other part of it. Each detail of divine reality is perfectly compatible with every other detail of creation. And since God made me in His image to express every aspect of His being, I must be in perfect accord with all that exists.
As these ideas flooded my thought, my breathing became normal, and my sinuses cleared right up. I had never felt relief so quickly and thoroughly. I reported to work on Monday morning without any problems. And in the almost 30 years since this experience, I've never suffered from those symptoms again.
