TWO MEANINGFUL HEALINGS

ELIZABETH FINCH

For about six years, as a teenager, I suffered from severe menstrual cramps.

I remember my father picking me up at the nurse's office at school on at least one occasion. He took me home in silence, and I just was too shy to tell him about my problem. I thought he probably knew and didn't want to embarrass me by asking about it. He was a devoted Christian Scientist and had many healings, a very quiet man who was always praying for our family. I could always feel my parents' prayerful support.

My mother would share some spiritual truths with me, such as the idea that there is no substance in matter and therefore there can be no pain in matter. She would frequently give me Christian Science articles to read and ponder. I recall that I usually prayed with "the scientific statement of being" found in Science and Health (see p. 468). Praying about this issue brought relief, but there wasn't a permanent healing.

One morning, while facing this pain again and debating whether or not I should go to school, I decided to call a Christian Science practitioner and get some help through prayer. I was fed up with it, and I wanted to go to school! When I called the practitioner, she kindly reminded me that I was not a mortal in the "Adam-dream" but a spiritual idea of God. The "Adam-dream" is a way that Science and Health describes the Bible's second account of creation. According to this account, we are very much mortal, made up of matter and subjected to all sorts of ailments. This is the mist, or murky thinking, that likes to pull us down into the muck, where there seems to be no good or God anywhere (see Gen., chap. 2).

I preferred thinking about the first account of creation, which says that God made us in His image and likeness, which is spiritual, not material (see Gen., chap. 1). If that was true, then the mortal counterpart was a lie! Because God made "man," meaning both men and women, good and whole, women are free from the belief that they are forever "cursed" to ache or be in pain every month. Actually, the mortal body is innocent. It really can't do anything but be useful. It can't suffer, feel, or even think on its own. That's a misconception that life can be found in the body, when all Life is in God.

The practitioner also said that I should "step away from the bar" I was holding—kind of like a ballet bar. As a child, I'd taken many years of ballet. And after very rigorous ballet exercises at the bar, it was always so nice to let go and relax. In other words, I understood this to mean that I should let go of the false idea I'd been holding to that life is in matter instead of Spirit.

As soon as I hung up the phone and walked out of the room, I started feeling better. I gathered my school books, called the practitioner again, and told her I was better and going to school. It was a joyous, pain-free drive there. This marked a healing that has remained permanent for well over 20 years.

Another time, while working and living away from home, I went to visit my parents and started experiencing some discomfort with a tooth. I told my dad about it. He referred me to something found on page 468 in Science and Health: "Substance is that which is eternal and incapable of discord and decay." I read that and thought about it before going to bed.

About 1:00 a.m., I awoke with a very painful tooth. Immediately, I turned to that passage in Science and Health. After I spent a long hour of consecrated prayer with the entire paragraph, the wave of intense pain peaked and then broke, when I started realizing that the spiritual idea behind a tooth is pure—it's not subject to decay or discord. Its spiritual function always remains untouched and intact.

The pain vanished, and I was able to go back to sleep. I woke up in the morning refreshed and free from pain. My tooth felt solid like a rock. While brushing my teeth after breakfast, I thought of Jesus saying, "Upon this rock I will build my church" (Matt. 16:18). I chuckled to myself that my tooth was built on a spiritual foundation, too!

Shortly after this, I went to a new dentist for the usual cleaning. They had to take X-rays since I was a new patient. The dentist asked if there had been any changes, and I told him about the situation with the tooth. He looked at it and then the X-ray. Then he said he had to confer with another dentist. He left the room and came back to say something along these lines: "If it ain't broke, don't fix it!"

ELIZABETH FINCH
CHICO, CALIFORNIA, US

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