Reliance on medication overcome
Several years ago I was unable to urinate. The symptoms were so acute that I decided to go to the emergency room at the local hospital, where a temporary device was put in place to enable my body to function. It was removed after a couple of weeks, and later I was advised to see a specialist, who gave me a prescription for a medication that he said I would have to take for the rest of my life. I feared a recurrence of the problem, so I began to take the medication.
This was unusual for me because I had always relied on Christian Science for healing. Still, I continued to take the medication. I wanted to stop taking it and tried to do so using human will, but it didn’t work. Several times I asked for treatment from a Christian Science practitioner to be free of the medication, but I always relapsed into the old routine.
I stayed on the medication for about three years. Eventually, I realized that I couldn’t succeed by employing two opposing methods of treatment. Christian Science always begins with the spiritually scientific fact of our perfection as God’s offspring. Material medicine operates from the entirely different belief that life, substance, and intelligence are in matter, such as a material body.
Christ Jesus said, “No man can serve two masters: for either he will hate the one, and love the other; or else he will hold to the one, and despise the other” (Matthew 6:24). And Mary Baker Eddy wrote in Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures: “Dear reader, which mind-picture or externalized thought shall be real to you,—the material or the spiritual? Both you cannot have. You are bringing out your own ideal. This ideal is either temporal or eternal. Either Spirit or matter is your model. If you try to have two models, then you practically have none” (p. 360).
My desire to rely solely on Christian Science for healing trumped my fear of giving up the medicine. I called a practitioner and asked her to give me metaphysical treatment to support my efforts, and she agreed.
The healing came early one morning. I was filled with dread that if I discontinued the medication, the old problem would reappear. I searched JSH-Online.com for poems and articles containing the word dread and found a beautiful poem. While I don’t recall the poem itself, I do recall that its healing message removed all fear and that I truly felt that the Christ, divine Truth, had touched my thinking. When I called the practitioner again, my consciousness felt so filled with what the Bible calls “the beauty of holiness” (Psalms 29:2) that I was in tears. This feeling of holiness replaced the dread. I was completely healed at that moment. This occurred over three years ago, and I remain medication-free and entirely well.
I’m learning that our spiritual progress depends on how much attention we give material beliefs versus spiritual facts. As the Bible says, “We are always confident, knowing that, whilst we are at home in the body, we are absent from the Lord: . . . we are confident, I say, and willing rather to be absent from the body, and to be present with the Lord” (II Corinthians 5:6, 8).
As the offspring of God, Spirit, we each are the embodiment of spiritual qualities, such as health, intelligence, honesty, humility, and joy; therefore, we are harmonious, intact, and complete, forever present with and governed by our loving Father-Mother God.
Paul Sedan
San Francisco, California, US
