Won it!
It was the day of our first soccer game of the season, and both the junior varsity and varsity teams were eagerly awaiting the end of school and the beginning of the game. I, on the other hand, was not. I’d been fine the night before. But today was a different story.
I’d woken up that morning with a sore throat, which I’d shrugged off, thinking it would be gone in a few hours. But by my sixth-hour class, I couldn’t move my neck without it hurting, and my throat was worse than before. While everyone else talked eagerly about the game, I found myself dreading it. The opposing team was one of our biggest rivals, and not all of our players were eligible to play, because they hadn’t gone to enough practices. This meant that we would be playing with less than the standard 11 players and would have no substitutes. Though I knew I should probably sit out the game, I also didn’t want to let my team down.
The unexpected cancellation of the game at the end of sixth hour solved my dilemma. Soccer players were instructed to go to regular practice instead. When I told my coach I wasn’t feeling well, she let me leave once I had helped put the nets on the goals.
When I got home, my first thought was to start praying for myself. For me, a good place to begin is to read something that helps me understand more about God and His allness, so I grabbed my copy of Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures by Mary Baker Eddy, fully intending to read it until dinner time. Instead, I ended up falling asleep, then called a Christian Science practitioner when I woke up. She agreed to pray for me, and I began reading through the chapter in Science and Health titled “Recapitulation.”
One passage in particular caught my attention. It reads, “The unlikeness of Truth,—named error,—the opposite of Science, and the evidence before the five corporeal senses, afford no indication of the grand facts of being; …” (p. 471). This stood out to me because I could see that the things which seemed so glaringly real to me—things such as pain and sickness—actually couldn’t have any reality since they’re “the unlikeness of Truth,” or God. This meant I could know that although the five physical senses were telling me that something was wrong, the true picture of me as God’s perfect, spiritual likeness, told a different story. Focusing on God’s likeness, the way God created me, brings healing. After finishing the chapter, I went to bed.
I was completely well and ready to get back on the soccer field.
The next morning, my throat and neck were significantly better, and I was able to go to school. After school, I called the practitioner again, and she shared with me the idea that I was complete in all ways because that was how God created me. The definition of the word complete from Webster’s 1828 Dictionary is, “Having no deficiency; perfect.” Since a sore throat or neck would be an imperfection, I realized that pain and soreness couldn’t be a part of me. My whole being, as the expression of God, had to be perfect.
By the next day, I was completely well and ready to get back on the soccer field. When the next game finally arrived, I played without any problems. We won that day by a significant margin, but the victory that really stood out was this healing.
