I HAD A GROWTH on the side of my face for a couple of years that started small, but soon after my husband and I moved to a new community, began to enlarge. Initially I ignored it, until it started to worsen and the picture became quite alarming. Well-intended friends in our previous community had told me that I should have the growth surgically removed while I had good health insurance. Now I realized I should get on with doing something about it. And for me that meant praying to heal the condition, to eradicate it from my experience. So I prayed daily to address this problem.
Over the course of nearly eight years, I also had Christian Science treatment from several different practitioners. Even though the condition didn't improve for a number of years, and in fact became more pronounced, I was helped by each of these practitioner's prayers. The basis of our prayer included several simple foundational truths that helped me gain a better sense of identity, innocence, and renewal.
Identity: The Bible states that God created man (the spiritual identity of everyone, male and female) in His/Her image and likeness, and Mary Baker Eddy gave seven synonyms for God in Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures that help us understand God better: Mind, Life, Love, Truth, Spirit, Soul, Principle (see p. 465). I persistently affirmed in prayer my true identity as a spiritual idea of God, reflecting and expressing the qualities derived from the nature of God indicated in these seven synonyms. For example, I knew that because God is Life and Life is eternal, and because God is Spirit, then eternal Life is not in matter, but is Spirit. Therefore my life as God's reflection is not dependent on matter or any material condition, and I am not a mortal subject to material laws. I prayed to understand that nothing in the material frame of thought could affect my true being in God, Spirit. That was a great comfort, as it freed me from fear and a false sense of responsibility that I had to save my life in some way. My life, I realized, was safe and guaranteed in Spirit.
