Testimony of Healing August 26, 2013 Issue

The joy that is mine

Vienna McMurtry

In late 2008, I was invited to stay at my friends’ high-rise condo overlooking San Diego Bay while they would be away for three months. Loving San Diego, and being able to do my work as a Christian Science practitioner from anywhere in the world, made the decision easy for me. So I packed up the car, took the pup, and off we went from Missouri, where I was living at the time, to California.

The stay at my friends’ condo was great. Everything was going perfectly. Then with about three weeks of my stay left, my shoulder began to hurt. I prayed knowing my oneness with God, as I had learned to do in Christian Science. I understood that no discordant condition could attach itself to me, as God’s spiritual reflection. However, by evening the pain was quite severe. I couldn’t lie down, I couldn’t stand, and walking the dog was done in tears. By the next morning, despite my heartfelt reaching out to God for help, fear had set in, and I decided to call a Christian Science practitioner for prayerful treatment.

The practitioner and I spoke at least twice a day for almost three weeks. I was striving to express more grace and humility. I prayed to realize more of God’s allness, His oneness, His presence. Everything I read in the Bible and the Christian Science literature seemed to be leading me to getting a deeper understanding of God’s allness. In her book Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, Mary Baker Eddy gives us her spiritual sense of the Lord’s Prayer. I especially remember prayerfully working with the last line: “For God is infinite, all-power, all Life, Truth, Love, over all, and All” (p. 17). I made several little sentences out of this and pondered each of them individually: God is. God is infinite. God is all-power. God is all Life. God is all Truth. God is all Love. God is over all. God is all. That left no possibility that I could be outside of God. God, being all, meant that there was no inside or outside to God. Just all. 