Testimony of Healing October 6, 1980 Issue

About seven years ago I went to an optometrist...

LEOTA CARPENTER

About seven years ago I went to an optometrist who had been fitting me with glasses for around ten years. When he examined my eyes, he said he was sorry to have to tell me that there was a cataract growing in my left eye, which should be surgically removed in about a year. Knowing how news tended to travel in this little town where I had formerly lived, I said, "Promise me you will not put this on my record or tell anyone, and it will be taken care of. Don't you believe that all things are possible to God?" He answered, "Yes, but"—and I replied, "There are no ifs, ands, or buts in God's kingdom!" He agreed to keep my condition in the strictest confidence.

I began by thanking God for the healing I knew would come. Earnest prayer, acknowledging God's protective care, was undertaken first thing each morning, before my study of the Bible Lesson in the Christian Science Quarterly. In this prayer I recognized that perfection is the normal state of man, and I specifically refuted fear and medical beliefs. I also affirmed that I am wholly spiritual and that my true selfhood is "hid with Christ in God" (Col. 3:3), where it could never be touched by human opinions.

Mary Baker Eddy reminds us (Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, p. 264), "Spirit and its formations are the only realities of being. Matter disappears under the microscope of Spirit." Using the Concordance to Science and Health, I researched such words as vision, magnify, sight, freedom, and dominion. I also pondered regularly the seven synonyms Mrs. Eddy gives us for God, knowing that "Truth, Life, and Love are a law of annihilation to everything unlike themselves, because they declare nothing except God" (ibid., p. 243).