Flu symptoms—gone

I was raised in Christian Science and attended a Christian Science Sunday School. Growing up, I had many healings through spiritual prayer. Sunday School provided me with a wonderful resource to discuss my relationship with God. Learning that each of us is the unblemished expression of Spirit, God, that we constantly reflect His love, and that no physical illness can ever separate us from that love or cause us any harm became a way of thinking and living for me. Whenever symptoms of a cold, fever, or other illness appeared, I always turned to prayer as my first response and was usually relieved of the discomfort as quickly as it had come about.

One experience I had a few years ago, however, challenged me to dive more deeply into prayer. One morning, when I was in college, I woke up with what felt like head-to-toe symptoms of the flu. This caught me a little off guard because it seemed to have come out of nowhere. I had trouble getting out of bed, but managed to get to my 8:00 a.m. marketing class.

My professor took one look at me, and sent me back to my dorm. Actually, I was grateful to return to my room, but instead of making a real effort to pray about my condition, I quickly thought of some spiritual truths, decided to deal with the problem later, and promptly fell asleep. A few hours later I woke significantly more ill than before. It was then I decided that I really needed to dig in and pray.

I read and thought about many ideas in Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures by Mary Baker Eddy that discussed healing sickness. I affirmed that as God’s creation, made in His likeness, I constantly reflected only the substance of Spirit. God alone was the source of my health. Knowing that He could never create anything that would hurt or harm His creation, and encouraged by the many healings I’d had previously, I continued to prayerfully and mentally affirm my freedom from the relentless discomfort I was now experiencing.

However, I didn’t feel that I was making progress. There was no improvement in the way I felt, and I became very frustrated. Nothing seemed to work. No matter how I prayed, I just felt worse.

Then I thought about the times when friends or family members had come to me for support in praying through various health challenges. Their spiritual identity and divine protection always seemed so clear to me, and it was a joy to see the healing that resulted from prayer. I decided it was time for me to get some help, too.

I called my dad, who is also a Christian Scientist. He immediately started sharing metaphysical ideas that worked to shore up my own prayers. He reinforced my conviction in my unshakable unity with God. He asked me if God, the only Creator, couldn’t be sick and didn’t create sickness, how could I be sick? It was such a comfort to hear him restate these truths that I knew so well, and this helped bring my thoughts to a calm place where I could focus prayerfully without the frustration and impatience. With the self-centered, burdened approach to prayer behind me, I now gave my full attention to listening to God’s healing answers. Sure enough, as I turned my full trust and faith over to Him, the more inspired and confident in healing I became, and the more I felt His love.

One of the helpful thoughts that came to me involved a term we’d been learning about in my environmental science class—photochemical smog—and its effects on the environment. Caused by pollutants in the atmosphere which mix with other gases and sunlight, photochemical smog results in restricted visibility. In cities such as Los Angeles and Denver, this condition can distort the view and even make entire skylines seem to disappear. I saw that just as smog could never truly blur or obliterate the actual image of the city, my divinely assured wholeness couldn’t be obscured by false material concepts—such as the belief that the physical body can catch or produce sickness.

I began to see more clearly that my health could not be touched by this haze—this erroneous belief in a power other than God, infinite good. I needed to clear out the mental smog that was blinding me. I also began to see that God’s truths were always right there governing me and maintaining my wholeness. As these ideas sank in, I felt relief from every symptom I’d been suffering with throughout the day. I was completely healed.

I’m so grateful for this experience, which taught me that leaning wholeheartedly on God opens our thought to the flood of healing ideas constantly available to each one of us.

Matt Lawrence | Boston, Massachusetts, US