Testimony of Healing November 21, 1994 Issue

Are we really grateful for the good already received? Then...

Frederick R. Bellmar

"Are we really grateful for the good already received? Then we shall avail ourselves of the blessings we have, and thus be fitted to receive more" (Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures by Mary Baker Eddy, p. 3). This is how I learned the value of gratitude. I was stretched out in bed, unable to move except with extreme pain. I had been in a car accident, taken to a hospital, bandaged, and sent to recuperate.

A Christian Science practitioner whom I did not know had been called, and came to the hospital to pray for me. (Although I had been sewn up, I was not having medication.) As I lay motionless, the practitioner sat at my bedside and prayed. I only remember her saying this one thing; leaning over and looking me straight in the eye she said, "Young man, you're not grateful!" I was taken aback. I thought, but didn't say, that if she were in the pain I was, she wouldn't be grateful either. But she had been praying for me diligently, and I knew her words were not meant to condemn me. And so when she was gone I lay there thinking. What followed is as vividly clear to me now as it was so long ago. I had been rehearsing the accident, which had resulted in a broken collarbone and severe head injuries, over and over. It finally came to me that the lady had said I was not grateful, and I must prove her wrong. Right there, right then, I would be grateful.

What happened next was like lifting a heavy, rusty, neglected old lid and looking down into a long-empty well. I attempted to pull myself out of this mental pit and to be grateful—pretty lamely at first, it seemed. But soon I began to see things to be grateful for—I noticed that it was warm and dry in my room, while outside it was black and pouring rain. That was a beginning. I went on; it was a nice bed. Nice warm covers. I became uplifted with gratitude.

Send a comment to the editors

NEXT IN THIS ISSUE

Testimony of Healing

One day I woke up and I had a sore throat