Effects of a fall overcome

While I was on a run one morning, my shoe caught on a section of raised concrete on the sidewalk. As I was falling face first and trying to catch myself with a few long steps forward, I heard the mental instruction “Tuck and roll.” I quickly tucked my chin and rolled in a somersault onto the hard surface. The back of my head and my left shoulder hit the concrete, and then I was sitting on the sidewalk with my legs out in front of me. It all happened so fast. Immediately, I thanked God for what felt like an angel message. 

I knew my thought about the accident was going to be more important than the actual event. As a student of Christian Science, I have learned that what we hold in thought determines our experience. Regarding accidents, Mary Baker Eddy, the Discoverer and Founder of Christian Science, says in Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, “Declare that you are not hurt and understand the reason why, and you will find the ensuing good effects to be in exact proportion to your disbelief in physics, and your fidelity to divine metaphysics, confidence in God as All, which the Scriptures declare Him to be” (p. 397). 

I took a minute to pray, affirming that God is the All-in-all of the universe, and that as His spiritual expression, I could never fall out of His kingdom or be hurt. I reasoned that since God is totally good and the only cause, He causes only good, and good can be the only effect. As ideas of the one intelligent, divine Mind, we are the embodiment of spiritual qualities, not material parts or pieces, and two spiritual ideas cannot crash or collide with each other. The sidewalk represented qualities of functionality and stability—and I of grace and mobility. I felt 100 percent certain that these metaphysical statements were provable facts.