Food. The thought of it and the consumption of it occupy a great deal of our day. Food is a moneymaker, whether one owns a restaurant that attracts customers because of its known quality, or one works in the health industry assisting clients in planning a certain diet. Food can also become an obsession. 

One of my first healings as a Christian Scientist was of a fear of food. This is how it came about.

My mom had been medically diagnosed with thyroid cancer. After her third surgery, she decided to find her own answer to the persistent problem. She stopped going to doctors and began a quest for health. She investigated everything from unorthodox medicinal and dietary remedies, to Christian Science. When I was 11, Mom enrolled my brother and me in the Christian Science Sunday School. She began to study the Christian Science Bible Lesson and attend church on a regular basis. 

We went regularly for a couple of years. Then we stopped going to church. Mom really became focused on diet. She felt that certain foods could heal her and certain foods could harm her. 

Being so new to Christian Science, I, too, began to give food inordinate power. Mom insisted on purchasing organic fruits and vegetables, and we went to the health food store often. I took vitamins, avoided all foods thought to cause acne, and ate lots of carrots because they were supposed to bring many benefits. I was leery of food additives and pesticides. It’s true that good food quality is something to appreciate. However, I learned it is essential to understand spiritually the following statement in Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures by the discoverer of Christian Science, Mary Baker Eddy: “The fact is, food does not affect the absolute Life of man, and this becomes self-evident, when we learn that God is our Life” (p. 388).

It wasn't until my last year of high school that I decided to go back to the Christian Science Sunday School. Immediately, I felt at home. I was healed right away of my fear of food after reading the account in the New Testament of Jesus instantaneously healing a boy of a “dumb spirit.” Jesus told his disciples, “This kind can come forth by nothing, but by prayer and fasting” (see Mark 9:14–29). 

I realized I didn't have to be afraid of food anymore.

Where was the fasting? Neither the boy who was healed nor Jesus literally fasted from food. That had nothing to do with the healing. I saw that Jesus fasted, refrained from believing the false evidence of the material senses. Science and Health states, “To divest thought of false trusts and material evidences in order that the spiritual facts of being may appear,—this is the great attainment by means of which we shall sweep away the false and give place to the true. Thus we may establish in truth the temple, or body, ‘whose builder and maker is God’ ” (p. 428).

With this realization, I knew I didn't have to be afraid of food anymore or be preoccupied with certain kinds of foods. I began to eat normally and took to heart the Bibles verses, “Take no thought, saying, What shall we eat? or, What shall we drink? … But seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you” (Matthew 6:31, 33). I was no longer the least bit fearful or anxious about food. I stopped taking vitamins and believing that food could bring me health or beauty. Simply put, I enjoyed what was “set before [me]” (Science and Health, p. 222).

Some years later, I had an opportunity to overcome gluttony, or excessive indulgence in food. I was at school, many miles from home, feeling depressed about my workload and homesick. The only thing I looked forward to was eating.

I would start salivating on my way to the cafeteria in expectation of what I would be having for my meal. And I started to put on weight. Instead of praying about my school problems and homesickness right there, I decided that a trip home to be with my family was needed.

I arrived home only to find that there was turmoil going on in my family. “Great!” I thought. So now there’s a family problem and a food problem to heal! By this time, having made Christian Science my own, I learned the valuable lesson that it’s not a change of place but a change of consciousness, or thought, that brings healing to any situation.

I began cultivating a more intimate, trusting relationship with divine Love, our Father-Mother God. I was gaining the peace spoken of in Job, “Acquaint now thyself with him, and be at peace: thereby good shall come unto thee” (22:21). Soon, I was able to turn the family situation over to God’s care. In her Miscellaneous Writings 1883–1896, Mary Baker Eddy writes: “God is our Father and our Mother, our Minister and the great Physician: He is man’s only real relative on earth and in heaven. David sang, ‘Whom have I in heaven but thee? and there is none upon earth that I desire beside thee’ ” (p. 151). I returned to school with a balanced approach to my coursework and eating. As a result, I lost the extra pounds and was better able to handle my classes. My approach to food and preparing meals since then has been balanced and temperate.

I believe some of these same ideas I worked with blessed Mom on her journey, too. Although Mom didn't go back to the Christian Science church, she studied the Bible Lesson faithfully for the rest of her life. She, too, became less focused on food over the years. About six months before her passing she went to a doctor. When she told him of her medical history, he required an X-ray and there was no sign of cancer.

I like this passage from Science and Health: “Christ, Truth, gives mortals temporary food and clothing until the material, transformed with the ideal, disappears, and man is clothed and fed spiritually” (p. 442). Who among us doesn't have a ways to go before we are “clothed and fed spiritually”? Yet, even while we’re enjoying the “temporary food” we still need, we can begin to get a more spiritual sense of food. After all, it is the nourishing presence of Spirit that truly makes us healthy, happy, and beautiful.