One Evening My Son, Brian, and I were headed out to attend a midweek testimony meeting at our church. Pressed for time, we hurried down the steps from the family room into the garage, neither of us bothering to turn on the light. In the dark, I missed the last step and found myself airborne. I felt a distinct twisting of my body as I abruptly landed full force, face down on the cement floor.
Brian, already at the car, called out, "Mom, are you all right?" Although dazed and in pain, I knew I needed to be all right, so I answered, "Yes." Then I remembered that Mary Baker Eddy described in Science and Health the tendency of thought in the event of an accident: "When an accident happens, you think or exclaim, 'I am hurt!' Your thought is more powerful than your words, more powerful than the accident itself, to make the injury real." She further explained what to do about it: "Now reverse the process. Declare that you are not hurt and understand the reason why, and you will find the ensuing good effects to be in exact proportion to your disbelief in physics, and your fidelity to divine metaphysics, confidence in God as All, which the Scriptures declare Him to be" (p. 397).
By telling my son I was all right in spite of feeling injured, I had begun to "reverse the process" and rest my understanding on my "confidence in God as All." Since, according to the Scriptures, I live, move, and have my being in God (see Acts 17:28), I knew I could never fall out of God's allness. And if from a spiritual standpoint I had never fallen, I could know, too, that I could not have been injured. Although I still felt some pain, I stood up, brushed myself off, and went on to church confident that the healing was in progress.
Because the fall occurred in the dark, I hadn't really paid attention to my appearance. Sitting in the lighted church auditorium, however, I noticed that my slacks were torn at both knees. Then I saw that the tops of my darling new blue shoes were scraped beyond repair. My seeing this damage began to undermine my effort to stick to the spiritual facts I had been prayerfully affirming. After the meeting, I hobbled out to the car thinking I really didn't have much to be grateful for right then. I hurt all over, and my new shoes and slacks were ruined. How could this possibly have happened when I was going to church! I gave in to tears of self-pity and gloom.
Then, as we pulled into the garage, the headlights spotlighted the area at the bottom of the steps where I had fallen, revealing an amazing sight. Over the winter months many things had accumulated at the bottom of the steps—logs for the wood stove, an axe, a sledge hammer, empty bottles, and more. To the left of the steps I could see my husband's table saw.
From this vantage point, I could see how nearly impossible it would have been to fall from those steps without landing on a protruding object or hitting the sharp corner of the table saw. Instead, though, I had landed in one clutter-free small area, but at an angle. Then I recalled how my body had twisted as I fell causing a shift in the direction of the fall just enough to miss everything. I hadn't consciously done this. It's just the way my body went. Realizing this, I felt overcome with gratitude for having landed in the safest place possible. The self-pity and gloom instantly left. The pain throughout my body subsided.
However, the next morning the pain returned in both my right leg and arm, and movement of both were considerably restricted. And yet, with my heart filled with gratitude for God, I went to work. I recalled a statement by Mrs. Eddy from her book The First Church of Christ, Scientist, and Miscellany, which says: "To-day my soul can only sing and soar. An increasing sense of God's love, omnipresence, and omnipotence enfolds me" (p. 174). And, that's exactly how I felt—completely enfolded in God's protective allness and love.
Throughout the day, each time I felt pain, gratitude outshone it because of the knowledge that I had been protected rather than hurt—that I had always been safe in God's care. By the end of the day, the pain completely and permanently left. In fact, right after work I participated in a dance class moving about the floor freely and joyfully.
To top it off, two weeks after the incident, I received a gift in the mail from a friend—a pair of new blue shoes, almost identical to the pair that had been ruined. And my heart glowed with gratitude once again.
SHADY COVE, OREGON, US
