FOUR YEARS AGO, a dear friend wanted to do something special for my daughter and me. She arranged for the three of us to get a pedicure. Neither my daughter nor I had ever had one, so this was going to be a lovely adventure. No one knew I had not worn nail polish for almost 40 years. It had meant swollen eyes and red, itching skin all over my body. But now, thankfully, through a gift of love, I was given an opportunity to rid my thought of fear and prove the healing effect of gratitude.
I had first noticed the above-mentioned symptoms while I was substitute teaching right out of college and I had an obnoxious reaction to nail polish. After several days, I remember sitting down on my bed and giving myself a little talk. I went over many things I had learned in Sunday School. One of my Sunday School teachers was a lawyer, and I remembered him saying Sunday after Sunday that we needed to approach any challenge from the standpoint of a lawyer arguing for truth in the case. He’d remind us, “Reason is the most active human faculty” (Mary Baker Eddy, Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, p. 327). And he never let us forget this rule of thinking. He challenged us with questions like, Would your argument hold up in the court of Spirit, God? Is your reasoning sound? Those mental exercises were absolutely vital to my own spiritual growth. I was no longer in Sunday School, but I used the same reasoning skills I had been taught.
As I did, I realized I had been tricked into believing that allergic reactions were just part of the chemistry that make up many human beings. This allergy just happened to be a part of my uniqueness. But I could just hear my Sunday School teacher saying that I must reason correctly. So I looked at this situation again from a more spiritual standpoint. I reasoned simply that this skin reaction was not good, so it could not be a part of my true identity as God’s child. God is good. God is Spirit. I am God’s spiritual reflection. Matter, my skin, has nothing to do with my God-given, spiritual identity. Joy, love, patience, intelligence are what really define me.
