Recurring dizziness and nausea healed

Some years ago, during supper one evening I began feeling very dizzy. I soon became nauseous as well and had to lie down. I was unable to pray effectively for myself, so I called a Christian Science practitioner, which eased my fear. Still, the condition lasted two full days before I was able to function normally again. 

Once well again, I dismissed this baffling condition from thought … until the following year, when it occurred again. After that, it began occurring more and more frequently, until I was never quite free of it.  

During this period I remember reading a testimony in the Sentinel where a woman experienced the same symptoms but was healed the very morning they occurred, and they never reoccurred. That was encouraging. I decided that one thing I could do to help my own healing was to not accept defeat in my efforts to pray. 

We can always reach out to God in any extremity, and He does answer us, so I knew I shouldn’t permit a stumbling block of doubt to get in the way. Mary Baker Eddy wrote in Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, “Rise in the strength of Spirit to resist all that is unlike good” (p. 393). This helped me see that I could “rise in the strength of Spirit”—not my own strength—to defeat this foe. 

One Sunday morning before church, I felt the symptoms coming on again. It was a beautiful day, and I wanted so much to be in church that I decided I was not going to take this condition “lying down” anymore. I’d had enough! The thought occurred to me to sing hymns from the Christian Science Hymnal, which I did, accompanying myself on the piano. 

When it was time to go to church, I seemed well enough, so I went. I initially sat in the back of the church so I could make a quick exit if needed, but as we rose to sing the first hymn, I thought, “This is ridiculous! I won’t let this erroneous condition dictate where I sit in church!” I went to sit in my accustomed place at the front.

On my way home from church, I was jubilant. For the first time, this illness did not have the upper hand. When I got home, the only remaining symptom was a feeling of intense sleepiness, which I usually sank into when feeling unwell, but this time I mentally rejected and denied it. Instantly, that symptom was gone. A few more times that day, when the sleepiness intruded on me while I was reading Christian Science literature, I found I could “turn it off” just like that—by mentally rejecting it—and it would be gone! This was an interesting lesson for me in the mental nature of a physical condition and in the power to correct it instantly from a higher position by staying with spiritual truth as Christ Jesus instructed us to do (see John 8:31, 32). 

Going to church that day and taking a stand for Truth ended that cycle of illness. It was wonderful to be free of that error, but best of all, it is wonderful to feel that I am continuing on the upward way, growing in my understanding of the Christ Science through just such triumphs over error.

Joan Atkinson
Vassalboro, Maine, US