Testimony of Healing December 14, 2015 Issue

Freedom from arthritis symptoms

Garwin Smith

In early 2014, “out of nowhere” came painful soreness in both hands and wrists. At first I considered the pain as only an annoyance, requiring me to ration daily activity so I could do important things such as piano playing for church services, and I found work-arounds for many tasks. But by midsummer the problem had become an obstacle to almost all my activity. Rather than continuing to accept the temptation to “get along” with the challenge, I knew through my study of Christian Science that it could be vanquished.

Initially I addressed the claim of pain in the hands by denying there is any intelligence in matter and therefore any feeling of pain, and by affirming the rightness of being able to function fully because of my true, God-given freedom and dominion. But as the condition worsened—there were times when useful movement was barely possible—I recalled Mary Baker Eddy’s instruction for when treatment is needed: “To heal by argument, find the type of the ailment, get its name, and array your mental plea against the physical” (Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, p. 412).

I knew of the term arthritis and its common association with the worldview of aging. I live alone in my own house, so the threat of handicapping my independence was frightening. As the challenge persisted, my mental argument affirmed that all action is a manifestation of the infinite good, named God. In this universe of infinite good, “demand” and “supply” are united; there could not be a demand for any right action without the natural, harmonious ability to do what God is causing us to do, and this truth applied to all I had to do humanly. I continued to deny matter any intelligence to cause pain or impair movement, and I denied that man, as the reflection, the perfect idea, of God, ever loses his ability to fully express good, despite what calendar-watching would suggest.

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