Injured hip mended

Many years ago, my mother fell and injured her hip while in a nursing home. She had an operation to address the issue, and a metal plate was inserted in her leg. After a few months, this plate began causing her discomfort.

Though my mother was not a student of Christian Science, I am, and I often turned to Christian Science to help me with the various challenges that came up throughout my mother’s 16-year stay at the nursing home. During that time, she was unable to think clearly or take proper care of herself, and I was her guardian. So when this particular situation with the hip injury came up, I turned to Christian Science to keep my own thought in tune with what I knew to be true about God, our Father-Mother, and our relationship to Her. I affirmed that in God’s universe, everything is in its right place and nothing can be out of place. I continued praying along these lines.

My mother’s doctors decided that the best course of action was to remove the plate and let the hip “heal naturally” without putting another plate in. However, soon after the plate was removed, the surgeon told me that he might need to amputate my mother’s leg because the bones were not uniting properly. I asked a friend who was also a Christian Scientist to pray with me about the situation, as I was very fearful that my mother might lose her leg.

At this point, I mentally released my mother into God’s care. When I felt afraid, I would surrender my concern to God, understanding that God is Love and cares for all of us. I held to a lot of the truths I had learned over the years in the Christian Science textbook, Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures by Mary Baker Eddy. One of them was this: “Christian Science brings to the body the sunlight of Truth, which invigorates and purifies. Christian Science acts as an alterative, neutralizing error with Truth. It changes the secretions, expels humors, dissolves tumors, relaxes rigid muscles, restores carious bones to soundness. The effect of this Science is to stir the human mind to a change of base, on which it may yield to the harmony of the divine Mind” (p. 162).

I also thought of this verse from Colossians in the Bible: “That their hearts might be comforted, being knit together in love, and unto all riches of the full assurance of understanding, to the acknowledgement of the mystery of God, and of the Father, and of Christ” (2:2). I knew that because we are all offspring of God, our true identity is a compound spiritual idea, expressing spiritual qualities and “knit together” perfectly by God. This doesn’t include material parts or anything that can become separated from its right place—since we reflect God, nothing about our identity can be separated from good. This understanding of everyone’s true, spiritual being was a comfort to me.

Amputation was not mentioned again, and soon my mother was discharged from the hospital. When X-rays were taken several weeks later, a doctor examined them and observed that the bone was beginning to heal. There was excited commotion in the X-ray room as the doctors showed me on the X-rays evidence that my mother’s leg was healing, which the surgeon had felt would be unlikely.

At another checkup a few weeks later, more X-rays were taken. After examining them, the surgeon who had initially suggested possible amputation told me that he couldn’t believe it, but the bones in my mother’s leg had knit together. My mother was healed and no longer displayed symptoms of pain in her hip.

No matter where we are, God is ever present. There is no situation too dire or too steeped in material or medical beliefs to be redeemed by the divine influence.

Elizabeth Brewer
Medford, Massachusetts, US