Kitten healed

Recently we adopted two kittens from a rescue shelter. One is a gray tabby we named Hawthorne, and the other is an orange tabby we named Louisa May “Alcatt”—both are adorable and very curious. One day when Louisa was almost four months old, she was playing at the very top of our stairway on the second floor. I was standing on the first floor and looked up just as she lost her footing and fell a great distance to the entryway below, landing with a sickening thud. She tried to get up, but one of her legs wasn’t working properly, and her breathing was labored.

I picked her up as gently as possible, sat on the living room sofa with her on my lap, and began to pray. As I did, the image of her falling kept replaying in my thought. I said out loud, “No! That’s not the true picture. That’s not what God saw, so that’s not what I saw.”

Then this statement by Mary Baker Eddy from Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures came strongly to thought: “Accidents are unknown to God, or immortal Mind, and we must leave the mortal basis of belief and unite with the one Mind, in order to change the notion of chance to the proper sense of God’s unerring direction and thus bring out harmony” (p. 424). I thought deeply about this statement, and I saw that I needed to abandon mortal thinking and unite at that very moment with the divine Mind, the only true consciousness. 

I recited out loud the Lord’s Prayer and “the scientific statement of being” (Science and Health, p. 468). At first, it seemed as though I was just repeating words, but as I began to say the words more slowly, the power of these truths calmed my thought, and I was able to focus. However, the temptation kept coming to look and see if Louisa was getting better. I resisted this thought, knowing that I was not to “pray and look,” but to “pray and know” that all was well. I affirmed that Louisa was a perfectly balanced, fully functioning, unbroken, harmonious idea in Mind. I knew that the ever-present Christ was keeping me awake and alert to the truth of being and to Louisa’s status as an idea of God, whole and complete. 

The story of Eutychus being healed by Paul after falling down from a loft and being taken up dead came to mind (see Acts 20:7–12). I thought deeply about each part of the story and tried to grasp its spiritual lessons. The account begins with the disciples breaking bread. I thought of this as breaking the bread of Truth, entertaining in consciousness the true idea of God and the truth of being. The account also includes the description that “there were many lights in the upper chamber” where Paul was preaching. Spiritually understood, this upper chamber represented to me the light of spiritual consciousness and the elevated thought in the room, which was spiritualized and filled with the revelation of Truth. 

Now Eutychus is described as falling into “a deep sleep,” perhaps in the dream of mortal error, unconscious of the truth of being. After he falls and is taken up dead, Paul embraces him. Paul declares that “his life is in him,” and the account ends with Eutychus restored to life.

This statement from Science and Health beautifully sums up for me a main takeaway from the story: “God is the Life, or intelligence, which forms and preserves the individuality and identity of animals as well as of men” (p. 550). I was filled with gratitude for the spiritual truths I had gleaned from this story, and I immediately saw how they applied to Louisa. 

With these wonderful ideas flooding thought, I was ready to let Truth do its work. I started to read that week’s Bible Lesson from the Christian Science Quarterly, with Louisa continuing to rest in my lap. I don’t recall how long I prayed that morning, or whether I put Louisa down or she jumped off my lap. However, I do remember the joy in my heart as I saw her playing with Hawthorne and walking and eating normally. All the symptoms had completely vanished.

Later that evening while I was preparing for bed, the picture of Louisa falling began to replay in my thought, and I was tempted to question whether she would be OK during the night. Recognizing these thoughts as nothing more than temptations to doubt the power of God, I reaffirmed all the ideas I had been praying with that day, and the worry quickly disappeared for good.

The next morning, I awoke with the reassuring thought that all was safely under God’s government. Louisa continues to be a healthy, curious kitty, climbing about fearlessly and bringing joy to all who meet her. She is a daily reminder that God’s creation can never fall from God’s supreme care.

Carolyn Orta
San Mateo, California, US