Testimony of Healing December 9, 1996 Issue

For quite some time I had acne

Trisha Angenée Banks

For quite some time I had acne. It caused me great discomfort and shame. I'd hoped to go into modeling as a career, but the acne made this impossible, and this caused me to feel considerable frustration, bitterness, and anger.

On more than one occasion I had felt justified in buying medicated gels/creams to help me. But they all ended up in the trash because I knew there wasn't permanent healing there. I truly wanted to experience the manifestation of Truth with only the best side effects: spiritual growth, a clearer understanding of God, and the joy of knowing I could never experience a recurrence of the acne. All of that comes but one way!

It was time for me to "be still," as the Bible says (see Ps. 46:10), and utilize the great wealth of knowledge of God and man that I had gained from class instruction. Many wonderful thoughts came to me about what type of model/woman I really was and could only be. I wanted to express the spiritual model. This passage from Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures by Mary Baker Eddy came to me: "Let the perfect model be present in your thoughts instead of its demoralized opposite" (p. 407). To obey this rule was my first step toward freedom. By looking consistently at the model of spiritual perfection, I found that expressing goodness, grace, and a radiant countenance became more and more natural to me. I found myself seeing all of God's ideas in this way. I was less self-absorbed.