HEREDITARY ILLNESS HEALED

An experience I had illustrates our God-given dominion. The symptoms of cancer appeared on my body. I recognized them because my mother had had similar symptoms when she was my age, and she had died young. At first, I was scared blue. I was sure I would die. Basically, I was ensnared by a belief in statistics. Medically, it was thought that I had a liability to this disease because my mother had had it. But Christian Science rescued me from this belief. I knew it wasn't body that had been invaded but consciousness that was being challenged. I also understood that God is unchanging good, an all-loving Father-Mother who never made disease and does not send it to punish or challenge us. He does send His pure angel thoughts, which deliver us from the devastating belief in evil.

The first three months I lost a great deal of weight. I felt as though I was going "down the tubes," as the saying goes. But I persevered in my prayer. My prayer was not a prayer of petition to God to do something. Instead, I was trying to utilize the teachings of Jesus and to look to God as the sole source of my thoughts. My prayer was a sincere reaching out to understand and accept only what God, Spirit, knew and was causing me to be. I realized that in reality I had only one true Parent, because God is the Father and Mother of us all. Since God is Truth, He knows only what is good, intelligent, and true. And what He knows is eternally manifested in His precious offspring, man.

Since God is Love, I recognized that He was kind and just, merciful and tender. I knew this love of Love was tangible and omnipresent. I knew that when I let the tender presence of divine Love fill my consciousness, I'd be able to see through this lie of incurable disease. I began to understand that the only thing "incurable" in my experience was my oneness with God as my one true Mind. I understood this Mind to be the creative Principle of all that really exists. I accepted God as the only cause and the supplier of all true thought. This was my prayer.

I continued to reason along these lines: If God is the only cause and creator, could there be another power in opposition to His allness? Just because the world believes in disease as a power, and believes in a presence called evil as another god, did I have to believe it? (Isn't this what the belief in statistics is based on? Isn't evil—or mortal mind—saying, "I can make one out of every four people believe my lie. I can make them believe in another god, and so accept another power that can make them incurably ill"?)

As a longtime student of the Bible and Science and Health, I knew and understood and was convinced of the spiritual truth that God is All-in-all—the source of all life and substance. I rejected the lie of incurability on the basis that I was dealing only with false, ignorant belief about the nature of God and of man's relation to Him. I knew myself to be an individual spiritual consciousness, emanating from God. I knew I didn't have to change matter. I understood matter and mortality to be only false thought—an incorrect, uninformed view of what man really is and what constitutes his true substance. I found this paragraph in Science and Health: "Man is more than a material form with a mind inside, which must escape from its environments in order to be immortal. Man reflects infinity, and this reflection is the true idea of God" (p. 258 ).

This took me into a new world of inspired thought. I began to break away from the belief in statistics, for surely I was demonstrating my ability to reflect the same Mind Christ Jesus expressed, and not allowing myself simply to be carried away by generally accepted beliefs, no matter how scary and powerful they seemed to be.

Despite all these wonderful insights, there did not appear to be any change in the body. I was still looking to matter to change instead of completely surrendering to the spiritual facts coming to me.

One night I got discouraged. I took the dog for a walk, and as we started down the street, I said, "I'm not going to make it, am I, Father?" I was close to tears. I had three young children and a husband who was an invalid, and they really needed me. At the end of the street, there was a low bridge that ran over a canal below. I sat down on the bridge rail. The dog sat down beside me. My head was down; my shoulders were down; discouragement overwhelmed me. Suddenly I was aware of a full moon reflected in the water below. Trying to lift my thought with a little levity, I said to the dog, "Hey, Pinkie, there's a big shiny ball in the water. We should go down and get it and take it home to Ruthie. Wouldn't she love it!"

Then, when I would have naturally looked up at the moon, it was as though there were a hand on my head, preventing me from doing so. With my eyes still on the reflection I said aloud: "I know the moon is there because I'm looking at its reflection. If the moon weren't there, there would be no reflection." And then spiritual recognition dawned in my consciousness with a brightness that outshone the moon, and I said, "I'm looking at the reflection, but I'm seeing the original!" My inseparability from good was crystal-clear to me. This light of Truth came to me straight from God, pure Mind, and it was communicated in words I could understand, by the living Christ. The Christian Science textbook says, "Christ is the true idea voicing good, the divine message from God to men speaking to the human consciousness" (Science and Health, p. 332 ). Christ is the connecting link that enables us to feel our oneness with God.

Through this spiritual influx the love of God flooded my consciousness. It was everywhere present. There was nothing else to know. Its all-presence annihilated and obliterated the disease thoughts, the thoughts of discouragement, the thoughts of dying, and the thought of being separated from good. God's love was an arms-around-me presence. It spoke to me. It was tangible. It lay on everything. I couldn't think or know anything but His love. When I stood up, I felt like a million dollars. All thoughts—and physical evidence—of being sick and dying had fled, just as darkness does when the dawn comes. I had been completely healed by prayer.

Corinne Jane Teeter
Fort Lauderdale, Florida

(From an article originally published in The Christian Science Journal, March 1996)