Joy, freedom, energy, peace —one day during my senior year in college, all these things seemed to be taken from me. I was leaving the gym after an indoor baseball practice and slipped on a patch of ice, falling hard on the stone steps leading down to the street. I was stunned and unable to get up.

Immediately, a story in the Bible about Jacob wrestling came to mind. In Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, Mary Baker Eddy describes it this way: “Jacob was alone, wrestling with error,—struggling with a mortal sense of life, substance, and intelligence as existent in matter with its false pleasures and pains,—when an angel, a message from Truth and Love, appeared to him and smote the sinew, or strength, of his error, till he saw its unreality; and Truth, being thereby understood, gave him spiritual strength in this Peniel of divine Science” (p. 308).

In the moments that followed, I felt a bit like Jacob­ might have—struggling with a disturbing situation but having a hopeful glimpse of divine Love’s promise of reality as spiritual. In order to more tangibly realize this angel message, I needed to turn to God and listen.

I was able to slowly get up from the pavement and walk the quarter mile up the street to my dorm room. I closed the door and began to pray. Because of pain and swelling in my back and tailbone, I was unable to sit down, so I stood and turned wholeheartedly to God, not to ask Him to fix my body but to gain the clarity to understand my true selfhood as our divine Father-Mother Love’s cared-for child. I prayed based on this explanation in Science and Health: “The way to extract error from mortal mind is to pour in truth through flood-tides of Love” (p. 201).

This, at first, was not easy. But as I started to pray with some of the Bible-based synonyms for God that Christian Science brings out, I became less focused on the discomfort. I acknowledged God as the only true Principle or cause; as divine Life, ever-present and perfect; and as changeless Soul, maintaining my true identity.

In essence, my prayers affirmed God as All-in-all and acknowledged that I am the reflection of all this divine good.

At this point I was able to lie down on my bed. I realized that the joy, freedom, energy, and peace mentioned earlier are all spiritual qualities of God and that therefore they can never be stopped or destroyed. They are a part of my spiritual, true identity, and nothing can make this otherwise. I began to feel encompassed by Love, by the kingdom of heaven, and the pain subsided.

Grateful for this progress, I reached out to God for further enlightenment, refusing to give in to the notion that it would take some time for the swelling to go away. I leafed through a notebook where I kept favorite thoughts from Science and Health and came across this eye-opener: “We are all sculptors, working at various forms, moulding and chiseling thought. What is the model before mortal mind? Is it imperfection, joy, sorrow, sin, suffering? Have you accepted the mortal model? Are you reproducing it?” (p. 248).

This was a turning point, at which I let go of the whole slip-and-fall incident as belonging to me. I saw that nothing can rob us of health and comfort. God is All, and as children of the divine Father-Mother, we’re not bounded by matter but freed by Spirit, and we dwell in the perfect atmosphere of Love.

Night came, and I fell asleep. I woke up in the morning fully refreshed and free of any swelling or pain. I was able to pitch a complete ballgame the next day with no limitations.

Going forward, this healing solidified my reliance on God and His spiritual laws as explained in Christian Science. It is a cherished beacon of light to me, proof of the healing efficacy of the Christ, Truth.

Bruce Butterfield 
Chesterfield, Missouri, US