Testimony of Healing July 16, 2018 Issue

Healing on the dance floor

Sonette Tippens

Filled with delight, I was dancing the cha-cha at the end of two hours of nonstop dancing during a four-hour ballroom dance party. Suddenly, my right jaw went numb, and this numbness quickly began to spread throughout my right arm and down into my right leg.

As a Christian Scientist, I had experienced a lifetime of healings, sometimes through my own prayers, and sometimes with the help of devoted Christian Science practitioners. Although a frightening name for what was happening to me came to thought, I rejected entirely the belief that because of my age I was susceptible to anything unlike what God was giving to me, which included goodness and perfection, freedom of movement, normalcy, joy, and every other good quality.

Because I was entirely convinced of the truth of the Bible promise “There shall no evil befall thee” (Psalms 91:10), and of this statement from Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures by Mary Baker Eddy: “Spirit is God, and man is His image and likeness” (p. 468), I refused to accept anything contradictory to those truths. I excused myself from my dance partner and walked out of the dance hall to my car, in spite of the cold February night. In my car, I used my cellphone to call my daughter. “Please pray for me right now,” I said when she answered. She asked, “Where are you? What’s wrong?” I answered, “I am in the parking lot at the dance hall and will be leaving for your house soon. Please pray to know that I am normal and can do all things normally.” I also asked her to help me fully embrace this fact from Genesis: “And God saw every thing that he had made, and, behold, it was very good” (1:31), and to entirely reject any claim that I could be otherwise. She lovingly agreed.