One afternoon while enjoying a swim in the Sea of Cortez with my husband, our two children, and a friend, I was evidently stung or bitten on one of my toes by something that apparently didn’t like sharing space with me. Since I was the only one getting out of the water at the time of the incident, no one else noticed what had happened.
Not wanting to stop the activities of the day, I sat down and started to pray, but the pain was so severe that I couldn’t sit still. I noticed blood coming from the toe and went back to the water’s edge to wash it off, all the while repeating out loud “the scientific statement of being” from Science and Health (p. 468), establishing my spiritual identity. But as I stood there, numerous scary thoughts flooded my thinking. What if what bit me was poisonous? Didn’t I recall someone saying there was a certain sea creature’s bite that could cause blood poisoning?
Meanwhile, the severity of the pain was not subsiding at all, but instead intensifying. I called my husband to come help, since I felt unable to handle the situation. My thinking was scattered, racing, and afraid, and I knew he would support my prayers with his own clear understanding of God’s love for me. We stood together while declaring spiritual truths out loud. As I started to regain some calm, one of the first ideas that came to me was something my children and I had read earlier that day in the weekly Christian Science Bible Lesson: “Ah Lord God! behold, thou hast made the heaven and the earth by thy great power and stretched out arm, and there is nothing too hard for thee” (Jer. 32:17). By remembering that quote I felt I could more deeply grasp the fact that all creatures were made by God, and that their spiritual substance was God-established and God-directed.
