Standing up to leg pain and weakness

In Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, Mary Baker Eddy notes the many examples in the Bible of Christ Jesus casting out sin and sickness, and overcoming death. She shows that he was able to do this by understanding them as material illusions contrary to God and God’s spiritual creation. Jesus said, “Ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free” (John 8:32). 

One day a number of years ago, I had an opportunity to put this spiritual understanding into practice. As I got up from the table after finishing a meal, my left leg was suddenly too painful to put my weight on. I limped a couple of steps and then stopped. It came to me from my understanding of Christian Science—the spiritual laws by which Christ Jesus healed—that there was no divine cause for this condition; therefore, I had to classify it as he surely would have: as unreal—as, for example, he did when he raised Jairus’ daughter from death (see Mark 5:22–24, 35–42). 

I understood that God is ever present and the only creator and only ever causes good for His children, including me. Since this painful condition was obviously not good, I knew it couldn’t be true. I decided to put my foot down firmly on the ground and walk normally. The pain and weakness disappeared almost immediately. However, every time I got up from a sitting position that day, my leg became painful again, so I repeated my affirmation of what is true of God and man and followed it with the same action. Each time, the problem quickly disappeared.

I continued in the same way the next day, whenever I felt pain in my leg. Despite my going on a long walk over a steep hill with my husband and some friends, the problem didn’t inconvenience me. It continued for another three days, as did my response, after which it left completely and has never returned.

Understanding the truth that Jesus demonstrated for us—that our all-loving Father-Mother God is the only cause—and putting my foot down both mentally and literally helped me hold my ground, so that this condition could not be sustained. It faded out of my consciousness and therefore out of my experience.

I am so grateful that we are given the power to refuse anything unlike our all-loving God, who is divine Life. Denying the condition on that basis and holding to the truth of being dissolved the illusion and revealed life in and of God as it really is—painless and strong—resulting in the healing of the leg. 

The following words from Mrs. Eddy’s answer to a question posed in her Miscellaneous Writings 1883–1896 sum it up for me: “That God is Truth, the Scriptures aver; that Truth never created error, or such a capacity, is self-evident; that God made all that was made, is again Scriptural; therefore your answer is, that error is an illusion of mortals; that God is not its author, and it cannot be real” (pp. 49–50).

Margaret Jane Seymour
Reading, Berkshire, England