A sisterhood of Readers/practitioners praying and working and supporting one another in the holiest of ways

I’m writing to share a wonderful healing. Last weekend, I traveled about 70 miles with friends (wife, husband, and daughter) to hear an orchestra concert. Tickets to the event had been the family’s Christmas gift to me. Along the way we stopped for dinner.

Not long after the concert began, I started feeling ill. I prayed, but wasn’t able to break through to inspiration. About two-thirds of the way through the concert, I needed the wife’s assistance in leaving. The situation rapidly worsened, and I was concerned that the claim was food poisoning. I expressed this concern to my friend, who is also a practitioner, and she said she would work for me.

When the concert ended, my friends decided to get me home as soon as possible. With further prayer and assistance from my friend, I made it to the car. However, we had only ridden a few blocks when I had to stop. While stopped, I contacted another practitioner friend to work for me. My onsite friend was driving, as well as trying to maintain some light conversation with her husband and daughter, and I felt that focused support was much needed at that point.

There were numerous stops on that long trip home, some by the roadside due to urgency.  Several times I went into spasms. There was, though, some reprieve between stops so that I was able to reach out to God. Once I reached home, my symptoms again became severe, so my friend took her husband and daughter home, then came back to be with me. 

I made it upstairs to my bedroom, changed clothes, then lay down across the bed. Finally, I had a bit of stillness, physically and mentally. I rested while my friend sat nearby, reading and praying, and my little dog kept vigil outside the door. I asked my friend to read me the 91^st Psalm a couple of times, and was able to latch onto the idea that God loved me and honored me. (I had remembered that Mrs. Eddy often recommended this psalm to students and patients.) 

A simple question recurred to thought, “You don’t expect this to continue, do you?”  No, even from a human standpoint, I didn’t expect this to go on indefinitely. That thought was encouraging, and I think it marked the initial undercutting of the claim.

Then my friend brought me my phone and went downstairs while I called to check in with the practitioner. I had been in touch with the practitioner a few times, but now I was able to listen and respond more normally. She didn’t say a great deal, but did mention the presence and power of divine Love.

I said I still wasn’t able to pray in a satisfying way, only to reach out to God. She said simply that divine Love would give me my prayer. This reminded me of a very sweet statement in J.B. Phillips’ The New Testament in Modern English. Under the heading “This is not mere theory—the Spirit helps us to find it true,” Phillips translates Rom. 8:26 as, “The Spirit also helps us in our present limitations. For example, we do not know how to pray worthily, but his Spirit within us is actually praying for us in those agonizing longings which cannot find words.”

After we talked, I again reached out to feel God’s presence, acknowledging that divine Love would give me my prayer. At this point there was a lightening of my thought. I even recognized a little humor in my being sprawled across the bed, having lifted only one hand to dial the phone and put it to my ear.

As I continued to reach out prayerfully to feel Love’s presence, I saw a mental image of my friend, sitting in the Queen Anne chair in my living room and reading the Bible, with my little dog lying in the chair next to her. Over the past few hours I had been so aware of this dear friend watching over me, praying, willing to do anything to meet the human need. Now the idea came, “Go downstairs where the love is.” It was a compelling directive. I felt like a little child, wanting very naturally and happily to be in the living room with my friend and my dog, where love was being actively expressed.

I sat up, took my pillow under one arm and a blanket under the other, and headed out the door. Just a few minutes earlier I had gotten up, but quickly returned to bed due to discomfort and weakness. Now, suddenly, I was well! 

That was it. In those moments of getting up, walking out the door and down the stairs, I was aware of being entirely and utterly free. I didn’t become free; I simply was free.  Whereas only minutes earlier I had seemed to be overcome with illness, now I was overcome with an inner sense of joy and love. 

As I entered the living room, there was my friend, sitting in the Queen Anne chair reading the Bible, with my little dog beside her—just as I had pictured them. I felt such joy and gratefulness that I was giggling and crying at the same time. All I could utter was, “Oh … Oh … Oh my.” I sat down on the sofa across from my friend and we smiled at each other. Eventually I picked up a Journal that was nearby and read aloud part of a testimony that had impressed me with a sense of divine Love’s power to heal and bless. Then I told my friend she could go home to her family.

Looking back, I think the directive, “Go downstairs where the love is,” was very similar to Jesus’ command, “Rise, take up thy bed, and walk.” It was simple, clear, emphatic, and bore with it all the impetus, joy, and strength needed to carry it out.

I called the practitioner to share the healing with her, and we rejoiced together. A very special dimension to the experience was that all three of us—my local friend, my practitioner friend, and I—are Journal-listed practitioners who are currently serving as either First or Second Reader, so we had been sisterhood of Readers/practitioners praying and working and supporting one another in the holiest of ways. Earlier in the evening, I had asked my friend to arrange for a substitute for me for the following morning’s service. But when I released her to go home, I assured her that I would be at my post.

By now it was after 2:00 a.m., and I was as refreshed as I would have been had I just awakened from a sound night’s sleep. I had something to eat—taking no thought at all for kind of food what might sit well. The words from Mrs. Eddy’s allegory of the trial echoed in thought: “Then the prisoner rose up regenerated, strong, free.” (S&H 442:7–8) I took time in deep prayer before finally turning in for the night.

In the morning, when I stopped by the First Reader’s room to thank my friend, I noticed that my voice was somewhat raspy. As I departed to my Second Reader room for quiet prayer for the service, part of a verse from the prophet Nahum came to thought, as if God Himself were saying it to me: “[I] will make an utter end.” (Nah. 1:9) I also had a strong sense that divine Love would round out the demonstration, so that it would be like a full arc. I knew there would be no problem with my voice, and there wasn’t.

The service that morning seemed especially holy. Several people mentioned feeling a spirit of love in the service. In talking to each of my practitioner/Reader friends, I learned they, too, had felt the afterglow and blessing of this healing while reading.

A very interesting and fruitful week has followed this experience. There was a same-day healing of flu symptoms in my practice, as well as a quick healing of a rather serious condition of a family’s dog.  And there was a harmonious and decisive dissolution of an unfruitful personal relationship.

While praying today, it occurred to me that when we have significant healings, we should be like Moses at the burning bush and “turn aside to see.” We should look at the inspiration straight-on, linger over it, and allow it to leaven thought and outlook in ways we may not have considered previously. This experience has been very meaningful—it’s wonderful to have it to share!