This time I didn't need stitches
Originally appeared on spirituality.com
Last summer, while I was dropping off my daughter at my mom’s, I caught my ankle on the bottom edge of the screen door. The pain was severe, but without looking at the wound, I silently and forcefully declared, “There is no pain in matter.”
I’d become familiar with this concept through studying Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures by Mary Baker Eddy, which makes clear that God made each of us spiritual, not material. So my declaration was affirming my spirituality and God's care for me.
Within about a minute, the pain was gone. When I looked down at my ankle, though, I was alarmed by what I saw. The cut was deep and long. On the way home, I called a Christian Science practitioner and asked her to pray with me. I don’t remember much of what she said, but I felt calm and uplifted after I hung up the phone.
When I got home, I cleaned and dressed the wound. I knew it wouldn’t help to think about how bad it was or speculate on how long it would take to heal. Instead, I thought about simple but powerful truths: God loves me. Fear not. Matter has no power. I had grown to understand these ideas through years of reading Science and Health and the Bible.
That night, though, I woke up suddenly. I was in a little bit of pain, but mostly I was afraid. What if I need stitches? What if it gets infected? Those thoughts seemed to be coming from my past—from childhood memories of accidents that resulted in visits to doctors' offices or hospital emergency rooms.
It was a little like having a tug of war with myself. One thought would “speak” on the side of fear, the other on the side of Truth. So I countered each fearful thought with a true one. I knew I didn’t have to be afraid of flesh or what it looked like or what it was doing, because I was really spiritual.
This meant that I had control over this current circumstance, because God created me and gave me dominion over it. Within about a half-hour, I felt assured that God was taking care of me, and I was able to go back to sleep.
Over the next few days, I kept the wound clean and bandaged. I focused on the mechanics of dressing my ankle, and not on examining how it was doing. Otherwise, I didn’t look at the wound at all. After about three days, however, I did notice that it was nearly closed.
Over the next couple of weeks, if I felt any pain, I prayed and the pain quickly subsided. Often, a Bible verse or a line from Science and Health would pop into my mind, and the idea would be exactly what I needed at the time. These messages comforted me and relieved my fear. This was God’s way of taking care of me.
During this time I felt confident and in control. I knew that when I declared even the simplest truth about myself and my relationship to God, I was doing all I could do, and that would be enough for healing.
And it was. By the end of three weeks, the wound was perfectly healed. And even though a tiny scar remains, it is not only fading away, it is also straighter and better healed than any previous wounds that had been stitched.
This wasn't a dramatic healing, but it was important because I learned more about how to mentally turn away from the body and listen to what God, Spirit, was telling me. And, I realized the wound wasn't part of my true identity. It just served as a reminder of who I really am—spiritually.
Overcome fear and injury with Love:
Science and Health
393:16
177:19
King James Bible
Rom 8:38, 39
II Tim 1:7