I’d like to share several healings I’ve experienced through prayer since I began studying Christian Science at age 14. In my late teens, I had menstrual cramps that caused me to spend one day each month lying on the couch. I’d had the problem for a couple of years, but each month it got a little worse. I had discovered that if I tried hard, I could find one position in which I could get reasonably comfortable. But then the day came when there was no relief. When I realized what I was facing as far into the future as I could see, I lost all patience with this imposition. I heard myself say, “That’s enough!” I grabbed my copy of Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures by Mary Baker Eddy, collapsed into a chair, and let the book fall open in my lap. I looked down and my eyes fell on this line: “If Spirit is all and is everywhere, what and where is matter?” (p. 223). With that, the pain evaporated as though it had been a little cloud around my head. I got up from the chair completely free. That was my first physical healing in Christian Science.

When I was in my 30s, I began to feel the symptoms of allergies, but they were so mild, I just ignored them. Each year they got a little worse, though, and about five years later I had full-blown allergies. After the umpteenth person asked me if I had a cold, I decided it was time to heal this condition. I shifted from just putting up with it to trying to listen to what God was telling me. The first thing I did was study Mrs. Eddy’s well-known quote from page 175 of Science and Health: “What an abuse of natural beauty to say that a rose, the smile of God, can produce suffering! The joy of its presence, its beauty and fragrance, should uplift the thought, and dissuade any sense of fear or fever. It is profane to fancy that the perfume of clover and the breath of new-mown hay can cause glandular inflammation, sneezing, and nasal pangs.” 

But I still felt there was more I needed to learn. After two or three months of praying and listening, I woke up at 2 a.m. suffering from every symptom associated with allergies, and I was miserable. I got out of bed and reached out to God with all my heart: “Father, what is it you want me to see?” Instantly the thought came, “You believe in two worlds.” I thought, “Why, yes, I do believe in two worlds.” I was fully aware that when I was in my bedroom reading the Christian Science Bible Lesson, I was so happy and at peace; but when I went outside, I stepped out into a cold, cruel, frightening world. Now I saw that there couldn’t be two worlds. As the Bible says, “Know therefore this day, and consider it in thine heart, that the Lord he is God in heaven above, and upon the earth beneath: there is none else” (Deuteronomy 4:39). I reasoned that there is no inside or outside to God’s kingdom, that I simply live in infinite Spirit, and that’s the only kingdom there is. With that, the symptoms fled, and I was healed. I had been out of bed for no more than ten minutes. I never suffered from allergies again. 

The third healing involved our little dog, Happy, who suddenly got very sick. I called a fellow church member for Christian Science treatment. It was a Tuesday. By Thursday, Happy had been curled up in a little ball on the couch for many hours. He hadn’t had a drink of water or a bite of food, and he hadn’t moved a muscle. When I went to bed Thursday night, I thought he might not be alive in the morning. But when I got up, he was still curled up on the couch, exactly as before. 

I called the church member who had been praying for us, and she asked, “What is holding this healing up?” Instantly, I remembered reading a headline in the newspaper one morning three weeks earlier about a disease that was attacking dogs. I knew I shouldn’t leave that negative idea in my thought, but I didn’t take the time to reverse it in prayer. Instead I thought, “Happy could be healed of this disease.” And off I went to work.

Now I could see that what I had really accepted was “This is a real disease. It’s attacking dogs. If Happy is one of the dogs attacked, he could be healed in Christian Science.” However, one of the most important things I had learned in Christian Science class instruction was that if you think disease is real for your neighbor, you accept the possibility of it being real for you. The truth, I could see now, was “There is no disease for any dog.” When I shared this insight with my friend on the phone, she said excitedly: “That’s it! That’s it!” We talked for another minute or two, and then I hung up the phone. Before I could move my feet from the place where I had been standing, I heard “chomp, chomp, chomp.” Happy was eating the dog treat I had set next to him two or three days earlier. Then he jumped down from the couch, and his little claws made a smart “click, click, click” sound as he crossed the kitchen on his way to the back door. He had not needed a moment of recuperation. He had gone from death’s door, as I saw it, to perfect health. Happy was healed, permanently. 

Kathleen Anderson
Fair Oaks, California, US