Testimony of Healing October 25, 1999 Issue

Maintaining a spiritual focus restores normal functioning

Kathleen S. McKown

Two years ago I was attending a meeting in Chicago with a friend. During the meeting I began to feel ill, and after the lunch break I spent quite a bit of time in the ladies' room suffering from diarrhea. As I prayed, I thought of this statement in the Christian Science textbook: "Look away from the body into Truth and Love, the Principle of all happiness, harmony, and immortality" (Science and Health, p.261). To me this meant that I should be so conscious of God and His loving, harmonious control of His spiritual creation, that my body would not be able to hold my attention. I found it very challenging to do this, however. I felt afraid of what my body would do next, and I kept trying to think of things I could do to keep it comfortable and to make it behave normally. Over the next several days I learned some important lessons about how to maintain a spiritual focus.

I spent the next two days at my friend's home, feeling extremely uncomfortable most of the time and unable to leave the house. I was so grateful for my friend's support during this time.

It seemed as though my body was out of control, but I was convinced that God is never absent and is always in control of His child. I determined to accept this and to try to understand it more fully. The first step was to acknowledge God's control over my consciousness. I rejected the idea that I couldn't control my thinking or that the material body could force me to think about it. When it seemed most difficult to focus on anything but my body, I began thinking of spiritual qualities that I knew constituted my real, spiritual identity. Finding that I could successfully do this, even when the symptoms were most distressing, released me from the fear that I wouldn't be able to "look away from the body."

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