Pain isn’t normal

I used to struggle with monthly menstrual cramps. To be honest, the pain seemed normal to me. My friends dealt with the same issue, and the mentality was that there was nothing we could do about it, except maybe take medicine to temporarily relieve the pain.

Once, when I was traveling from my home in Rio de Janeiro to see my grandparents in another state in Brazil, the pain became so severe that I began to feel like I might faint. But I had been attending the Christian Science Sunday School, where I’d learned that God is always loving me and taking care of me. In that moment, I was able to pray with this healing idea, and within an hour the pain went away. I knew, though, that I wanted a permanent healing, and so I began to think more about some of the things I had learned in Sunday School.

For a long time, I was mystified by the story of Adam and Eve in the Bible. They were thrown out of paradise, and were cursed to struggle and experience pain, because of one mistake. It didn’t make sense to me that God, being all power and all good, could create something capable of doing something so wrong—like a man and a woman who would be disobedient. And if somehow He did create something that turned out to be a mistake, why not just fix it, instead of punishing it for the rest of eternity? Since God is all power, He certainly could have done that.

I wanted a permanent healing.

What I learned in Sunday School helped clear this up for me. I learned that the story of God cursing the woman and the man and condemning them to suffering may be called the creation story, but what it depicts is actually the opposite of the real and true creation, which is spiritual and completely good—just like God. In fact, it’s the description of creation in the first chapter of Genesis, in which God’s children are blessed and “very good,” that truly explains the creation of the real man and woman. I found it helpful to study the first chapter of Genesis, as well as Mary Baker Eddy’s chapter called “Genesis” in her book Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, which shows why only spiritual creation is real.

A couple of months later, while I was preparing for an important exam, I felt the pain coming back again. I immediately thought again of those Sunday School lessons: that I am made in God’s likeness, so I was not condemned to suffer. At first I was trying to keep studying and sort of pray at the same time, but soon I realized I needed to stop what I was doing and really ask God for help. 

The first idea that occurred to me was to listen to the Christian Science Daily Lift. When I logged on to the Daily Lift page on christianscience.com, the first Lift I saw was from a college student who was talking about a healing she’d had. The thought that stood out to me was what she said about why it’s possible to not believe a lie. She made the point that when you’re really sure about what’s true, then you can’t be fooled if someone tells you a lie. If you know a wall is painted pink, and you’ve seen that it’s pink, it doesn’t matter if someone tries their hardest to persuade you that the wall is gray. No matter how loudly or how many times they repeat the lie, it doesn’t make any difference, because you know the truth.

I immediately thought again of those Sunday School lessons: that I am made in God’s likeness, so I was not condemned to suffer. 

I realized that since I knew God created everything and created it good, and that He created us in His image and likeness, then any other story of creation had to be a lie. The suggestion from the Adam and Eve story that women had to be punished for generations—that was a lie, too. I saw that my only identity is as an innocent child of the Almighty. And this passage from the Bible came to thought: “Ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free” (John 8:32). 

And it did. Just like that, I was healed of the pain, and I was able to get back to my studies as if nothing had happened. And the healing was not only complete at that time, but it has also proved to be permanent. I’ve never struggled with those monthly pains again. 

I’m so grateful for what Christian Science has taught me about how pain isn’t something we have to consider normal, because God made us free.