A few summers ago, after gardening in a wooded area, I discovered a mark on my body that indicated a tick bite. When I had found ticks on myself before, I had always removed them and prayed to not allow fear or images of a disease associated with tick bites to grow in my thoughts. There hadn’t been any issues. 

However, this time there was a mark that was enlarging daily, and I began experiencing a variety of symptoms—some simply annoying, some frightening—over a period of weeks. During this time, two relatives mentioned Lyme disease and stories similar to what I had been going through. And shortly before this incident, a neighbor had invited me to go to a local talk about the disease; I’d politely declined. Concerns and fears about ticks seemed to be everywhere.  

Early on, I called a Christian Science practitioner for prayerful support. She reminded me that God, divine Love, “made harmless the poisonous viper” (Mary Baker Eddy, Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, p. 243) that bit the Apostle Paul, and that Paul shook off the viper—a creature others accepted as having a fatal bite—as if it were nothing. 

The practitioner also reminded me that Christ Jesus said to his disciples, “I give unto you power to tread on serpents and scorpions, and over all the power of the enemy: and nothing shall by any means hurt you” (Luke 10:19). I was comforted by the fact that as God’s reflection I am completely spiritual and not a vulnerable mortal tossed around by suffering. We talked about man’s God-given dominion over every creeping thing (see Genesis 1:26–28), which the practitioner said she thought of as a promise of our dominion over all “creepy beliefs.” I had to realize that this problem was nothing but a creepy, false belief. It just wasn’t true, since God’s kingdom does not include poisonous ideas that could harm each other. 

I clung to the idea that God made everything good and therefore His ideas are harmless. Because I am a spiritual idea, given dominion by God, nothing can contaminate me or violate my purity. 

I was so grateful for the practitioner’s steadfast help and for a testimony that was shared on JSH-Online.com about a healing of poison ivy. In that testimony, the speaker shared that he saw the snake in the allegorical account of creation that begins in the second chapter of Genesis as representing the mortal mentality that attempts to “poison” by introducing the false concept that there is a power apart from God. I saw more and more clearly that neither my thought nor my body could be poisoned by a belief in a power other than God, good. 

Every time a symptom appeared or seemed aggravated, I returned to the idea of a loving God as the only cause, and to the truth that I am spiritual and cannot be victimized or contaminated by any material belief. My prayers continued for a couple of months, until the symptoms stopped for good. I was completely free and have remained so for more than four years. 

As I prayed through this experience, I often thought about why I was relying on prayer, and this statement from Science and Health sums it up: “The Christian Scientist has enlisted to lessen evil, disease, and death; and he will overcome them by understanding their nothingness and the allness of God, or good” (p. 450). I am very grateful for this healing. I am also grateful for the teaching in Christian Science that health and harmony are normal and natural; we don’t have to accept any beliefs to the contrary.

Candy Sawyer 
Doylestown, PA, US