Anatomy of a healing

I had a healing recently that taught me much about mental anatomy. In Science and Health, Mrs. Eddy states, “Anatomy, when conceived of spiritually, is mental self-knowledge, and consists in the dissection of thoughts to discover their quality, quantity, and origin. Are thoughts divine or human? That is the important question….The Christian Scientist, through understanding mental anatomy, discerns and deals with the real cause of disease” (Science and Health 462:20–24, 31–1).

I woke one morning with a toothache. A dentist had filled the tooth over a year before, but said that eventually I might need a crown to replace the tooth. His warning came back to me now, along with the pain. As I went about my day, I prayed to understand more deeply my spiritual perfection as the complete likeness of God, without any pain or history of decay. By the next day, though, the pain was so intense that I had to stop everything I was doing and face the fearful thoughts that seemed to be standing in the way of healing.

The first thought I needed to face was the assumption that a visit to the dentist was the fastest route to relief from pain. I countered that thought vigorously. As a life-long Christian Scientist, I had experienced many healings, including quick ones. I remembered a healing of incapacitating back pain; in that in that case, I had taken a significant step forward when I made the commitment to turn only to God for mental and physical comfort. That healing was accomplished in a few days.

I also remembered that the readings at the previous week’s Wednesday testimony meeting had been on pain. One citation from those readings really resonated with me: “Banish the belief that you can possibly entertain a single intruding pain which cannot be ruled out by the might of Mind, and in this way you can prevent the development of pain in the body. No law of God hinders this result” (Science and Health 391:9–13).

Having made the decision to rely completely on God for healing, I called a practitioner to pray with me. Her loving willingness to help was a great comfort. For the rest of the afternoon, I sat quietly, reading Science and Health and finding peace by keeping my thought close to God. By late evening, though, the pain was so intense that I could not imagine sleeping. I texted the practitioner and asked her to pray for me if she was still awake. Immediately, I got a text back saying she would be happy to pray. Once again, her loving willingness calmed my fears. I got into bed and found a podcast on JSH-online in which several people testified about healings of pain. One of them, by Lois Carlson, was a healing of an abscessed tooth. She mentioned going into a quiet room to ask God what she needed to know, and the thought that came to her was “God is closer to me than the pain.” I clung to that thought, thinking I would never sleep, but that I could be close with God nonetheless.

And then it was morning, and the pain had diminished so significantly that I was truly surprised. What had happened? I didn’t think I had learned enough or understood enough to be healed, and yet, aside from a sensitive lump on my gum, healing was undeniable.

When I called the practitioner to share the happy news, she said, “I think we need to learn to be less surprised and more grateful” for healing. I most certainly was grateful, but I also wanted to understand more of the Science of the healing – the anatomy of it. I asked myself three questions that I thought would help with that understanding. They were (1) What helped with the healing? (2) What was the learning from this healing? and (3) What now? What helped with the healing?

The decision to really stand with God and know that Mind is the only healer was a great starting point. After that, I had to face down the suggestion that this healing would take a lot of time. It helped to remember that all of Jesus’ healings were instantaneous, as were many of Mrs. Eddy’s and countless accounts of healing in the Christian Science periodicals. In an article called “The question of time and healing,” Ethel Baker writes, “What truly matters – what in fact is absolutely necessary – is a change of thought from materiality to spiritual Truth. And though this mental and spiritual transformation may take diligent as well as patient prayer, it never requires time” (Journal, June 2017). I realized that although I had not felt I was making much progress the day before, I had been diligent and persistent.

The Bible-Lesson that week contained the story of God’s commands to Moses. At God’s command, Moses threw down his rod and saw it become a serpent, but, also at God’s command, he picked it up and it became a rod again. Similarly, he put his hand in his shirt and took it out to see leprosy covering it, but when he put it in his shirt a second time, it was restored. Mrs. Eddy explains, “The illusion of Moses lost its power to alarm him, when he discovered that what he apparently saw was really but a phase of mortal belief” (Science and Health 321:16). I had taken time to declare and know, to the best of my ability, that pain was an illusion, a “phase of mortal belief.”

What was the learning?

The first thing I learned – or was reminded of – was that there are no laws of matter. Even when I had felt I was not making the necessary mental progress to be healed, the Christ was at work. I had understood to some degree Mrs. Eddy’s statement, “Have no fear that matter can ache, swell, and be inflamed as the result of a law of any kind, when it is self-evident that matter can have no pain nor inflammation” (Science and Health 393:18-21). I thought about the Scientific Statement of Being and saw that matter really cannot feel.

When I called the practitioner to tell her of my remarkable freedom from pain, she said, “One thing I know: this isn’t about your tooth.” This reminded me that a claim of pain or any other difficulty is never what it seems to be. As my Christian Science teacher once said to me, “Physical problems are never physical.” From that conversation, I understood that physical problems are always about unhandled mental states. That is not to say that we go digging around in our thought for some long-held belief or character flaw, but that as we pray, the mental misconceptions that need healing come to the surface to be faced and rejected.

Another idea that helped me was understanding that although this healing had felt very personal, it was not a selfish event, but profoundly unselfish. In actually, every healing alleviates the suffering of all humans. The joy of discovery we feel in a healing turns us with greater love, patience, and vigilance to the world, and we become a blessing in it.

I also learned that I didn’t have to understand all of Christian Science to be healed. The thought “God is closer to me than the pain” was enough to bring healing. How unfathomably great and powerful must God be, if just a thought could help me see that I was already in the heart of His all-loving universe.

What now?

Although I was more grateful than I could express for the healing of pain, there was still a tender lump on my gum, so more prayer was needed. I knew I needed to stop checking in with matter, either by exploring the sensitive area with my tongue or by prodding it in my thought. A much beloved sentence from Science and Health stayed with me, “A spiritual idea has not a single element of error, and this truth removes properly whatever is offensive” (Science and Health 463:12–13). I read the word “properly” to mean “completely,” so I knew the healing of pain could be followed by the removal of the evidence of any physical problem.

The last item in my list was to keep listening to what my all-loving Father-Mother is telling me, every moment, about my identity as a complete, joyful, pain-free reflection of God. Within a week, the healing was complete, without any sign that there had ever been a problem. That was several months ago, and there has been no return of the condition.

I am so grateful for the Christ that shows us the nearness of God every moment; for the lives of Jesus the Way-shower and Mrs. Eddy, who was unflinching in her mission to give the Science of Christianity to the world; for the Christian Science periodicals that remind us how healing takes place; and for practitioners who are always ready to help so lovingly.