One afternoon while preparing to bake cookies with my grandson, I stepped on one of his metal toys. “Ouch! That stupid thing!” I exclaimed. I put it to the side and let go of my annoyance, and we continued with the baking.

The rest of the afternoon was so busy that I didn’t specifically pray, and there wasn’t even a spare moment to look at my toe, which was hurting. I was simply thinking in an almost lighthearted way: “Bake cookies. Done. Hang the laundry. Fold the laundry. Done. Do the dishes.” 

However, that evening as I walked to the train to go home, the pain had intensified to such an extent that the thought came to go to the hospital. But this thought was followed by another—that I could spend time praying according to Christian Science. I did that with gratitude, thinking through every idea that came from God as a comforting and loving message about His infallibility.

When I arrived at home, the thought of the hospital came again. But I continued to ponder very diligently every divine thought I was receiving and then lay down in bed.

At that moment, there was a slight click in my toe, and the pain spread even more. This time I vehemently countered it with something specific: What does God know about me? Only good, because He made me. What is it that is trying to tell me the opposite? What Mary Baker Eddy, in Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, calls “mortal mind” or, more precisely: “Nothing claiming to be something, for Mind is immortal; . . . the belief that sensation is in matter, which is sensationless; . . . that which neither exists in Science nor can be recognized by the spiritual sense;  . . .” (pp. 591–592).

I reasoned that my spiritual sense—my ability to perceive God and His manifestation—could not be taken from me, His spiritual idea, and neither could my intactness, since both are given to me by God, infinite good. I also didn’t doubt for a moment that my daily prayer to protect against inharmony of any kind was effective. I gratefully trusted in God and, despite the pain, fell asleep peacefully.

The next morning, I awoke with my toe feeling only a slight pressure, which disappeared during the following day. I was able to go out with a smile, praising God, and have had no further problems with my toe since.

Kerstin Schaeffer
Hamburg, Germany