Article February 16, 2004 Issue

Living headache-free

God has power to heal—right now!

By Pamela Cook

Rushing To Get To a Meeting about a year and a half ago, I grabbed my briefcase in one hand, my purse in the other, and started out of the house. I had been ignoring the tension headache that had been building throughout the morning, and by this time my head felt like it was in a vise. At this point, I thought, I'd just have to tough it out until that night when I could get a good night's sleep. By the next morning, I thought, the pain would probably be gone.

For years, a headache often awaited me at the end of a particularly busy day. I had always thought of this as simple cause and effect—when I pushed too hard at work, racing against the clock to accomplish all that needed to be done, often postponing lunch way beyond when I was hungry, the result was a severe headache.

I had never been a big fan of medicine, and as my study of Christian Science deepened over the years, I had grown increasingly confident about relying on spiritual treatment for all kinds of problems—what Mary Baker Eddy termed the "medicine of Mind" (Miscellaneous Writings 1883—1896, p. 252). I had thrown out my last bottle of aspirin years before to rely exclusively on God for healing, but I had not yet conquered these recurring headaches. I prayed off and on about them, but it just wasn't a priority. It seemed the only solution was to wait and give them time to go away.