Testimony of Healing August 19, 2013 Issue

Gaining a foothold

Ingrid Porter

One of my favorite things to do is walk the dog. So I was very perturbed when, a few years ago, my right heel began to hurt frequently on these outings. I didn’t want to stop walking the dog, so I limped along for months, wishing the pain would go away.

I often listened to the Christian Science Bible Lesson on these walks to help prepare for my position in church as Second Reader. I noticed I never experienced pain or limping during the Sunday church services, and I remembered the story in Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures by Mary Baker Eddy of the elderly lame actor who could hardly walk, but when his cue came to go on stage he leaped up like a young man, performing his part with ease and able to walk normally (see p. 261). I thought, “That’s just like me!” I knew I was so focused on the biblical truths I was reading to the congregation that there was no room left in my consciousness for a sore foot. I endeavored to bring that same level of spiritual thinking to the rest of the week.

One helpful, inspiring thought from Science and Health became a constant companion on my walks: “When the mechanism of the human mind gives place to the divine Mind, selfishness and sin, disease and death, will lose their foothold” (p. 176). The word foothold—well, that made me laugh, and I decided I wanted to memorize that sentence. As I tried to correctly recall the order of “selfishness and sin, disease and death,” I saw them as listed in order of severity, with selfishness being the least severe issue to handle and sin, disease, and death the more challenging. So, I reasoned, it would be wise to nip the whole thing in the bud and watch out for selfish thoughts first! I could do that. It became a fun exercise to stand porter and determine if thoughts coming to me were Godlike or human willfulness.