Deep cut on child’s face quickly healed

One day when my youngest daughter was about three years old, she pulled down her Christmas stocking from the fireplace mantle. The heavy metal stocking holder came crashing down with it, hitting her in the face. I’d been sitting nearby when this happened, but was unable to get to her in time. A tremendous sense of anguish, fear, and guilt swept over me for displaying those stocking holders. My daughter was crying and had a deep cut on her face, so I scooped her up and began comforting her. I gently pressed a clean cloth to her face and told her how much God loved her. I acknowledged the spiritual truth, as taught in Christian Science, that she could not be vulnerable to accidents of any kind, and that she could not be outside of God’s care or protection for even an instant.

As I held my daughter, I spoke these spiritual truths out loud. Then I picked up the phone and called a Christian Science practitioner for prayerful support. After I talked to the practitioner, my husband, who is not a Christian Scientist, called, and when I told him what had happened, he said that he wanted a doctor to take a look. I told him that I’d contacted a practitioner for help, but that I would take our daughter to a doctor to respect his wishes. When I called the doctor’s office, they said they couldn’t see her for several hours, so I made an appointment and kept praying. Soon, my daughter calmed down. But when I looked at her face, a black eye was developing, and the gash from where the stocking holder had made contact was alarming.

I continued to feel so guilty and stupid for having those heavy stocking holders on my mantle in the first place. However, as I prayed to know that my daughter was safe in God’s care, I realized that I needed to heal my own sense of guilt. It was only giving power and reality to the idea that my daughter could be a victim of a mistake. Instead of ruminating over the incident, I began to affirm that my daughter was never vulnerable, never outside of God’s protection. We were both God’s loved children who were constantly directed and governed by divine Mind. And we were capable of making intelligent and wise choices, so there could be no consequences that suggested a mind or will separate from God.

A few hours later, my daughter was playing with some toys, and I noticed that the discoloration on her face was already fading—as if a switch had been flipped to reverse the appearance of bruising. An idea from Science and Health characterized this progress: “Science reverses the false testimony of the physical senses …” (Science and Health, p. 120). I was so grateful to know that God was present, and that He was opening my eyes to the fact that He’d always been governing.

We drove to the doctor’s office an hour later, and when the doctor examined my daughter, he said that a cut of this kind would normally require several stitches, but that it had already closed so beautifully he barely needed to do anything. He decided just to clean it a little bit. As I drove my daughter home, my heart was overflowing with awe and gratitude to Christian Science for the immediate, practical evidence of God’s healing power.

The next day, the cut was almost completely healed, and the following day, when I was walking with my daughter to the mailbox, I realized that there was practically no trace of it at all—I’d never even seen a skinned knee heal so quickly. And in the following days, the cut completely vanished, leaving no resulting mark or scar.

This quick healing has been a “staff on which to lean” over the years when I’ve been faced with other challenges.

Rondi Olson | Woodinville, Washington, US