Late in 2007 a spot developed on my cheek, like a small wound. Some of my family, who are not Christian Scientists, expressed concerns about this condition and encouraged me to seek medical intervention. I kindly declined, explaining that because of my life-long experience seeing the healing power of God, I knew I could rely on Christian Science prayer alone for healing. However, after I’d worked with a Christian Science practitioner, the wound did not yield immediately to treatment. This became a time of deeper study and prayer, gained from the Bible and the writings of Mary Baker Eddy.
As the sore grew larger, I began to put a small bandage over it, but then store clerks and other strangers would ask me what was wrong with my face. This made me extremely self-conscious, as I didn’t know how to answer their well-meant inquiries, and I became reluctant to be seen.
As I continued to study and pray, I gained a stronger conviction that I am a spiritual idea of God, created according to God’s law and no other. In the first two chapters of Genesis we are given different concepts of creation—the first chapter showing us created by God as perfect and complete; the second chapter purporting that we are made of the “dust of the ground,” with a mind separate from the creator’s. Fortunately, I had learned from my study of Christian Science that this second story is allegorical, depicting the false sense of creation—of a man and woman imperfect and subject to false influences.
