ONCE, OVER A PERIOD of several months, I experienced severe headaches that would start aggressively, later to dull down and linger for a good portion of the day. Up until this time, I hadn't faced too many headaches in my life, certainly not with this intensity. My natural inclination was to turn to God for relief, not the medicine cabinet. Going to God has regularly met my needs. Mind, God, has been proven to me to be effective medicine. Yet my initial prayers failed to provide continuous relief. As the pain lingered, feelings of futility would circle me and God's goodness seemed out of reach. I felt out of the loop of Love. That feeling can occur when evaluating oneself from a limited physical standpoint rather than a spiritual one. So, I challenged myself to prayerfully get to work.
For me, this meant watching thought and praying consistently as Christ Jesus taught throughout the Gospels. For example, after prayerful solitude with a few of his disciples, Jesus was confronted by a father seeking help for his apparently epileptic son (see Mark 9:17–29). Neither the child's symptoms nor the report that Jesus' own disciples could not heal the boy distracted him from his loving intent to comfort and to demonstrate the power of God's goodness. The boy was healed.
I saw that I, too, must watch out for the subtle suggestions of man as fallen and susceptible to anything harmful. I could be vigilant not to accept the reports going around about such illnesses as migraines or seasonal allergy disorder as an explanation of the pain I was experiencing. Further, vigilance meant avoiding the temptation to rehearse these reports in thought over and over again. Instead, I looked for evidence of God's goodness right where I was. And I prayed, really prayed, "Thy kingdom come"—harmony is present here, present now.
