Inspired and healed after a fall
One night, as I walked to the train, I took a major spill on the sidewalk. It wasn’t an insignificant tumble, and my face received the full impact. Concerned helpers were on the scene immediately, offering to call for emergency aid and suggesting I sue the city for its poorly lit sidewalk. But all I really wanted was to get back on my feet and be alone so I could pray.
The Psalmist said: “The steps of a good man are ordered by the Lord: and he delighteth in his way. Though he fall, he shall not be utterly cast down: for the Lord upholdeth him with his hand” (Psalms 37:23, 24 ). Although stunned by the fall, I had confidence that divine help was at hand and that this whole scene could turn around quickly.
I thanked my helpers for their concern and called my husband to meet me for the train trip home. I was a sight—covered in mud, and I could feel my face swelling. It felt as though my nose might be broken and my teeth had been badly jarred. So I headed on the long walk toward the station, keeping my face averted with my head down. And I began to pray.
Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures offers helpful direction for prayer regarding accidents. In it, Mary Baker Eddy writes: “When an accident happens, you think or exclaim, ‘I am hurt!’ Your thought is more powerful than your words, more powerful than the accident itself, to make the injury real.
“Now reverse the process. Declare that you are not hurt and understand the reason why, and you will find the ensuing good effects to be in exact proportion to your disbelief in physics, and your fidelity to divine metaphysics, confidence in God as All, which the Scriptures declare Him to be” (p. 397 ).
In remembering this passage, I took seriously that phrase, “Declare that you are not hurt and understand the reason why.” I wanted to understand why I did not have to suffer the effects of an accident. I reasoned that my face and the sidewalk were not enemies. I saw that as ideas of Mind, God, each fulfilled an intelligent purpose. Expanding my sense of Mind, God, to include divine Love, I saw that Love’s creations are designed to support, comfort, and aid one another, but never injure.
I stopped repeating the accident in my thinking and instead let spiritual sense redefine both me and the sidewalk. If I were a material object, I could seem vulnerable and fragile, but as a spiritual creation of divine Love, I knew I was actually strong, resilient, and unbreakable. As a material object, the sidewalk seemed cold, hard, and unyielding, but it was designed with the intelligent purpose to stabilize movement and give support—to hold me up, not bring me down. At this point in my prayer, all pain in my face suddenly stopped and I felt my nose shift back into position.
I could feel I was getting somewhere. So I kept praying.
I remembered the insistence of those who came to my aid that the accident was the city’s fault. As easy as it would have been to place blame somewhere for the fall, I saw this as a trap. Such blame would have been misplaced. I had seen the fine condition of the sidewalk and the lighting was just fine, too. So I mentally acknowledged that I had no conflict with the city, and I forgave myself for wearing new shoes that were a little loose. With each point of forgiveness, I could feel things—like my teeth—adjusting into their proper place. In fact, a long-standing dental misalignment was corrected in the process.
Then my thought turned to an angry e-mail I had received earlier that day. I had been shaken by the initial smack when I first read it. I forgave the writer for his anger. There were no enemies here. Love’s ideas are designed to communicate clearly, understand each other, and bless but never harm.
After walking and praying for a while, I neared the train station. I stepped into a pharmacy to find a mirror. I wanted to tidy myself up before meeting my husband. I looked in the mirror and was pleased to see that the swelling had already started going down. Everything on my face was where it should be. While my mouth showed signs of a hard impact, my eyes caught my attention. Exhilarated by a sense of dominion over fear and falls, I was on-fire inspired by what I had seen in my prayer. That inspiration was in my eyes. When my husband saw me, he could see the “fire,” too. Initially concerned, he observed my face rapidly return to normal shape during the course of the evening. I continued to pray, and by the next morning, my face was nearly completely restored. By the second day, all evidence of the incident was completely erased.
To my husband, it was some sort of miracle. To me, the physical healing was, of course, lovely. But what I appreciated most was that although the physical evidence of an accident was crying for attention, it couldn’t sink me. I found God, divine Spirit, right there giving me a better sense of what was really happening. This spiritual perspective gave stability to my steps as it healed me.
I thought of the disciple Peter walking on the water to go to Jesus. With faith, he stepped out of the boat, but his faith was hobbled somewhat by fear. Peter was saved by Jesus’ “stretched forth hand.” To me, more than just Jesus’ personal hand, what caught Peter was the divine Principle, or Spirit, that is God—the same spiritual law that allowed Jesus to prove physical law to be nothing more than a mental suggestion, and nothing to either fear or accept.
In fact, Jesus reminded Peter that his little faith—the same faith that got him to step out of the boat onto the water—was enough to stabilize his walk. “O thou of little faith, wherefore didst thou doubt?” Jesus asked (Matthew 14:31 ). I don’t think Jesus was complaining about a small faith. To me, he was saying, “Don’t you realize what you have?” Jesus knew that a tiny mustard-seed faith could move mountains (see Matthew 17:20 ). When that faith is in God, it can certainly remove fear.
Like Peter, we can have confidence in the Christ—the divine power that catches and holds us up with its message of God’s wholly spiritual creation. No storms, no conflict, no accident or so-called enemy can keep us down. We may dip low from time to time, but we can and will stand steady.
Michelle Nanouche
Paris, France
