One morning while I was walking to work, I felt the sudden sharp pain of menstrual cramps. I thought, “Oh, great—now I won’t be able to do everything I had planned for the weekend.” But from my study of Christian Science, I knew that because I am the image and likeness of God, pain can’t be part of me because pain is no part of God. God doesn’t create pain, because God is only good. So I realized that accepting the suggestion that my cycle had to be painful was listening to a false belief.

I thought about this statement from Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures by Mary Baker Eddy: “Divine Love always has met and always will meet every human need” (p. 494). I know that God, Love, will never stop meeting my needs. To say that I am limited by cramps or anything else would be giving in to a belief that I’m separate from God and bound by limitation. But that couldn’t be true, because we are all loved and cared for by God—embraced in Love. I understood that I didn’t have to wait for healing.

At the time, I was working at a Christian Science Reading Room, and the staff had been affirming in prayer everyone’s inseparable relation to our Father-Mother God and oneness with Love. In support of this prayer, I had been focusing on the truth that God is both Father and Mother—the source of all masculine and feminine qualities, which are expressed by everyone regardless of gender. I could see that as God’s child, I can’t be limited or harmed by expressing those qualities but instead am complete and blessed.