While out of town visiting friends, my husband and I went roller skating with them. After lacing up my rented skates, I took one step onto the rink—and suddenly found myself on my back, with my head, elbow, and jaw bearing the brunt of the impact. Employees raced to check on me, and other skaters offered advice. The expressions on their faces and the great pain I felt seemed to indicate that this was a serious situation.

I assured everyone I was OK, however, and crawled to a bench. My husband, who before this had been gracefully skating like a pro, came quickly to my side and began praying, as did one of the friends we were with. I was shaken and not thinking clearly, so I called a Christian Science practitioner. Before I’d even finished explaining why I’d called, he declared emphatically, “It never happened!” 

This bold statement was a loving reminder that right then—and always—I live in the kingdom of heaven, where my entire experience can be only what God, good, causes. The practitioner shared other comforting spiritual truths before we got off the phone, but his first statement stuck with me. 

My husband and I left the rink, and on our way home, I prayed. As I did so, a name bubbled to the surface of my thought—someone I’d recently read about in the news who’d had a fatal head injury. This alerted me that my prayer needed to address fear, as we are taught to do in Christian Science. I thought about the fact that God, Life itself, was holding both that individual and me in perpetual safety. I also had to do some other mental housecleaning—I firmly rejected the flawed reasoning coming to me that I should never go to sleep again for fear of never waking up. That was obviously not practical—nor was it healing.

These mental shifts helped me to feel calmer, less afraid, and not focused on the pain, because I was focused on God. Next, I called my stepmom for support. We talked about the fact that the declaration “It never happened” might seem to be a naive or even reckless statement in light of the evidence of what appeared to be a serious accident. But it was based on the truth that we are wholly spiritual, made in the image of God, Spirit—as the Bible tells us—and can reflect only what is of God. 

This radically reoriented my thought to what God knows. It was like asking, “Did God fall down wearing roller skates?” “Is God’s jaw out of joint?” “Does God have a big knot on His head?” These questions were laughable, and the answers obvious. God is clearly subject only to His own law of harmony, and neither He nor anything that He creates can be subject to mishap, injury, or pain. 

I then realized that I was tempted to let the accident shape my every thought about the evening—as if everything revolved around those skates rolling out from under me. So I asked myself why my thoughts about the evening weren’t instead being shaped by the moment just before that, when I was happy with childlike anticipation of a fun activity, grateful to be with loved ones, and excited to glide out onto the glossy wood floor. I started to reframe the evening’s experience by cherishing that earlier moment as the reality and rejecting the following one as having never happened in God’s kingdom.

In Rudimental Divine Science, Mary Baker Eddy explains that health is “the consciousness of the unreality of pain and disease; or, rather, the absolute consciousness of harmony and of nothing else” (p. 11). As I thought about the impossibility of anything bad happening under God’s perpetual care and government, I became more conscious of “the unreality of pain and disease” and “of harmony and of nothing else.” Mrs. Eddy’s statement compelled me to consider more deeply what is real and what is not.

That night, I had a long conversation with one of our hosts about God—about divine Love’s allness, divine Mind’s all-consciousness, and divine Life’s immortality. There had never been either an accident or a death for anyone in God’s kingdom. 

Soon, I found myself thinking about Genesis chapter 3, then chapter 2—both describing a mythical human history that never truly happened. Likewise, God had never created a material canvas on which to sketch a story that could include an accident. And going back as far as I could in the Bible, I ended up in Genesis 1—which details the perfection of God’s creation, which He deems “very good” (verse 31). This is the ultimate “moment before” everything else and is what truly determines our experience: “the beginning,” which Mrs. Eddy explains in Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures as signifying “the only—that is, the eternal verity and unity of God and man, including the universe” (p. 502). 

These truths helped me to make some good headway, if you’ll pardon the pun. I felt no more pain, and—even more important—found that the fear and feeling of being unsettled had dissipated. I went to sleep and woke up normally after a peaceful night. By dinnertime the next day, I could chew with ease. The following day, with the other symptoms gone and the back of my head returning to a normal shape, I dismissed the practitioner with heartfelt thanks.

I’m so grateful for the prayers of my family, friends, and the practitioner, none of whom ever expressed fear or negative predictions. And I’m equally grateful for the adjustment in my thought, acknowledging God’s all-power as supreme and loving my fellow man—even if that is someone I’ve never met! This experience taught me not to be impressed by dire headlines or allow them to influence my thinking or experience, but instead to take in the news with an intent to heal by correcting thought, and I’m very thankful.

Angela Sage Larsen
Maplewood, Missouri, US