One day, in a brief moment of thoughtlessness, I managed to crush three of the fingers on my right hand. While the initial pain was intense, I immediately addressed this in prayer, knowing that I didn’t need to accept the false testimony of material sense, as Christian Science teaches. Quietly but firmly I held to the knowledge that physical pain could be no real part of my experience because my being was not in matter but in Spirit, God.
Within moments, the pain significantly decreased; and within a few minutes, it was largely gone—I only felt pain when I tried to move my fingers or put my hand into contact with something. I was grateful for this step of progress, but I knew that additional prayer was needed to see my complete freedom. I am a pianist, and I was concerned because in about ten days’ time I was committed to an activity that would require me to play the piano. A number of people were counting on me for that, and I was very confident that healing would come and I would be able to participate in that activity without any obstruction.
The next several days were a sweet time—truly filled with the confident expectation of complete healing. A number of ideas came to me, but two particularly stick out in my memory. The first is the naturalness of healing. In the chapter titled “The Great Discovery” in Mary Baker Eddy’s Retrospection and Introspection, she shares many of the insights that came as the Science of Mind was opening up to her. This quotation speaks to what I was feeling throughout this healing experience: “The miracles recorded in the Bible, which had before seemed to me supernatural, grew divinely natural and apprehensible” (p. 26). Thinking about the many healings I had experienced over the years through the operation of divine law, I reflected that nothing was more normal than the healing I was expecting and seeing.
