During an alumni rugby game at the college I attend, I missed a tackle and another player accidentally rolled over my ankle and injured it. Immediately, I began to pray and started by mentally declaring truths I have learned in Christian Science about my spiritual identity. I knew that I am the perfect child of God, Spirit, and that as His spiritual reflection, I could not experience any pain. After praying, I was able to continue playing without any discomfort, but following the game I began to struggle walking and soon after could no longer run.
At first, I continued participating in rugby practices. Even though I was praying, I often found myself resorting to human willpower to try to push through the pain and keep practicing. At times, when my thought was focused on God, I was able to run freely. However, when I resorted to relying on my own willpower, I found that I was barely able to jog, much less run. While I really wanted to continue participating in rugby practices, I knew it was a right idea to take time off to diligently pray and address this issue and not just keep powering through it or waiting it out. It wasn’t an easy decision, but I needed to listen to God, and I knew I could still support my team and help in whatever way I could off the field.
I started praying with the idea that since I am spiritual, not material, I cannot swing like a pendulum between feeling free to run and then experiencing pain. I knew that this was because pain could not be part of my spiritual identity. The Discoverer of Christian Science, Mary Baker Eddy, explains this in Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures when she writes: “Man is not a pendulum, swinging between evil and good, joy and sorrow, sickness and health, life and death. Life and its faculties are not measured by calendars. The perfect and immortal are the eternal likeness of their Maker” (p. 246). I also worked with an analogy I learned in my Christian Science Sunday School class that illustrated the relation of the material to the spiritual: If you think of an ice cube and then go into a sauna, you’ll notice that the ice cube won’t melt. This is because the ice cube is in your thought, not in the actual sauna.
