One day in October of 2019 I was struck with intense pain. I believed the symptoms indicated kidney stones, as they closely matched a friend’s description of bouts she’d had with that condition. I called a Christian Science practitioner for prayerful help—because that’s what I do when I feel like I’m in over my head. With her help, I worked conscientiously that week to think more deeply about God as my only source of existence and to stand more diligently on this divine law that governs me, rather than obsess over what my body was doing or feeling.
The practitioner encouraged me to think about my body as the temple, the image, of harmony, utility, and proper functioning. I studied the current week’s Bible Lesson from the Christian Science Quarterly and took to heart what Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures by Mary Baker Eddy says about anatomy: “Anatomy, when conceived of spiritually, is mental self-knowledge, and consists in the dissection of thoughts to discover their quality, quantity, and origin” (p. 462).
I knew that kidneys had something to do with filtering waste in the body. So I stood porter at my mental door (see Science and Health, p. 392) and filtered thoughts that were coming in. If they were harmful or untrue about God, then they were certainly not true about His perfect, pure spiritual image—me and everyone. So I pitched them out.
