When our three children were young, I was leading a very busy life as a mother, director of a large nursery school, and clerk of our church. I was feeling stress and pressure. During this time, my right arm and shoulder began to be painful, and gradually movement became restricted.

I prayed about the difficulty intermittently, and not too fervently, thinking it would go away as things so often did when I acknowledged the truth that as God's spiritual idea, I was innately perfect. But this time things got worse, until I was in constant pain, which interfered with my sleep and made it difficult to do little things such as comb my hair or sign my name well and easily.

One day as I was driving to work, the thought struck that soon I might not be able to drive my car, and this was frightening because all of my activities would be curtailed. At that point, I called a Christian Science practitioner for treatment through prayer.

I have practiced Christian Science since a family friend introduced it to my family when I was about six years old, and it has always been my resort in times of trouble—physical, emotional, and financial. (I have since learned to make it my daily resort and not wait for trouble!)

The practitioner agreed to pray for me, and asked me to think deeply about this particular statement by Mary Baker Eddy: "A little more grace, a motive made pure, a few truths tenderly told, a heart softened, a character subdued, a life consecrated, would restore the right action of the mental mechanism, and make manifest the movement of body and soul in accord with God" (Miscellaneous Writings 1883–1896, p. 354).

Well, these words were quite an eye-opener. Grace, pure motives, tenderness, a soft heart, the subduing of an overly aggressive character, the consecration of every thought to the service of God—the need for all these things hit home. I recognized in myself a tendency to be hardhearted and principled, but not necessarily loving. I loved to tell the truth, but not necessarily as tenderly as I could. I saw that my motives sometimes involved a love of myself more than a love of God.

This rethinking or repenting was fundamental to my healing of this difficulty with my arm because I knew that the condition wasn't really physical, as much as this appeared to be the case. It was thought—"the mental mechanism"—that needed to be set right, in order to restore normal and painless action in my arm, inasmuch as our body is the objectification of our thought. As the Bible says, "It is the spirit that quickeneth; the flesh profiteth nothing" (John 6:63).

I lived with that statement from Miscellaneous Writings for several weeks, and became absorbed in watching more closely what I was thinking. This, in turn, affected what I was doing. I became a little more gracious, better able to distinguish between selfish and selfless motives, more willing to be quiet and listen for the still, small voice of spiritual intuition, rather than asserting my own will, and I earnestly strove to consecrate my life to the service of God. This all become more important to me than the desired physical healing, and gradually occupied my thought more than the pain or immobility.

The symptoms troubled and pained me less and less, and gradually receded until they disappeared. While I do not recall the timing of events clearly, I know that I was able to thank the practitioner for her work and continue on with my own prayers until my arm was completely normal.

I have had many healings through working to understand the ideas in the Bible and Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures by Mary Baker Eddy. These healings have not usually come to me dramatically, but slowly and inexorably as this one did—through the dawning of eternal truths on thought, as the sun rises in the morning. In pursuing spiritual healing, I feel I am responding to the Apostle Paul's admonition, "Work out your own salvation with fear and trembling" (Phil. 2:12).

JOANN SMEDLEY
ISLIP, NEW YORK