Persistent leg trouble healed
For some time, I was having difficulty with my right leg. There was often stiffness, which made walking painful, and something felt out of alignment. I’d had other healings during this time, yet this particular issue lingered.
When climbing stairs, I had to two-step each stair, pulling myself up by the railing. Walking in general was labored, and crossing my legs was out of the question when sitting. I had some help from a Christian Science practitioner and did well when she was giving prayerful treatment. But after several days of praying on my own, the problem would reappear.
The discomfort would shift locations, to me clear evidence that it was mental, the effect of animal magnetism, or the carnal mind, which is opposed to God. Only God has power, and I needed to deny whatever the carnal mind suggested and affirm God’s allness. I sensed that there was something in my thought that needed to be corrected, brought into harmony with the understanding of God, and that I needed to work this out.
At one point, I found a group online studying the Christian Science Bible Lesson. For several weeks I studied the Bible Lesson for hours each day, applying the spiritual concepts, virtually immersing myself in truth.
One week, notes this group provided over email uncovered the key point I needed to learn. The notes discussed being grateful for the gifts, talents, qualities, and attributes God had given each of us, actually expressing love for oneself and gratitude for how God has made us. I responded to the email by saying I couldn’t do that. It seemed like self-glorification to me, the very opposite of humility.
The return email gently corrected this false sense, saying that I should and must love myself. How could one truly love others as God’s blessed reflection without loving oneself in the same way? This is included in the second of what Jesus considered to be the two greatest commandments: to love our neighbor as ourselves.
In Mark 12:29–31 , Jesus is recorded as saying: “The first of all the commandments is, Hear, O Israel; The Lord our God is one Lord: And thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind, and with all thy strength: this is the first commandment. And the second is like, namely this, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. There is none other commandment greater than these.”
I could see how I was obeying the “first commandment” by loving God through studying and practicing the ideas in the Bible Lessons. However, I realized a weak love for oneself might indicate a weak love for others.
I began typing a list on the computer of things to be grateful for about how God had truly created me. It wasn’t easy at first, but I kept at it. Such expressions seemed foreign to me. But I began to realize it is right to acknowledge and be grateful for God’s beautiful, perfect creation, all of it, even oneself.
Very soon I found myself rejoicing the day I found I could vacuum my whole house with relative ease. I noticed more freedom of movement when walking, climbing stairs, and making sudden changes in direction. This was the result of the spiritualization of thought that had been taking place.
However, something in my leg still felt out of place, restricting normal freedom. Meanwhile, I continued to study the Bible Lesson each day, identifying with and praying with the concepts I had been learning.
I prayed each day with the daily directives in Mary Baker Eddy’s Church Manual, working with them differently each time to maintain inspiration and keep my prayers fresh. Mary Baker Eddy’s article “Ways that are Vain” is one I would study at least once, often several times, a week (see The First Church of Christ, Scientist, and Miscellany, pp. 210–213 ). With each reading, my thought was raised to a more spiritual view, and I could feel the good effect.
This article reveals several ways in which animal magnetism—or the hypnotic influence of mental malpractice—would lead one “into error of thought.” In praying about the ideas in the article, before long I came face to face with an error in my thought that had been previously unseen. I’d describe it as a tendency to have some misguided priorities. Sometimes, as with the tares and the wheat, it can be difficult to distinguish between what our thought should be fixed on and what mortal mind, or a materialistic sense of things, would have one fixed on. But with greater spiritual maturity, which in my case came from deeper spiritual study and prayer, a clearer view of how I needed to progress dawned.
It took courage to expose and confront this tendency. But when I finally realized it wasn’t my thinking but animal magnetism, I could dispel it as foreign to me. Imagine the freedom I felt the next morning when I realized that not only was that mental error gone but so too was the bodily misalignment. Gone in an instant! The healing was complete.
Now I can assume normal positions when standing and sitting, walk with ease on any surface, climb stairs, and best of all, frolic with my granddaughter freely.
What seems to us as a long time is not even a blink compared to the spiritual awakening to our oneness with God. In the words of Second Peter 3:8 , “But, beloved, be not ignorant of this one thing, that one day is with the Lord as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day.” I’m learning that healing doesn’t take time. It takes spiritual devotion, keeping our thoughts on God.
Mary Kuhl
Bellevue, Washington, US
