I was with family at my brother’s house during the Thanksgiving weekend last year when the following incident occurred. As I stepped into the garage to visit his loving dogs in their dog pen, my shoelaces, which I hadn’t realized were dragging, got caught in the house door after it closed behind me. I fell hard onto the concrete floor below from a set of small steps, with my left shoulder taking the full impact of the fall.
As I fell, I yelled, “No!” mindful of the statement in Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures: “When an accident happens, you think or exclaim, ‘I am hurt!’ Your thought is more powerful than your words, more powerful than the accident itself, to make the injury real” (Mary Baker Eddy, p. 397). In yelling no, I was asserting, forcefully, that I could not be hurt—and that no accident could be taking place in Mind, God. I knew from my study of Christian Science that man is spiritual, the very expression of Spirit, God, and therefore always safe and secure in Him.
The pain was excruciating; however, I was able to get up on my own and go back into the house, where my family immediately supported me in my prayers. While some members of the family tried to reach a Christian Science practitioner at my request, I asked my niece to look up Bible verses that referenced “fitting together” or “fitly joined together.” They were words that kept coming to me.
