Recovery from paralysis

When Science and Health came into my life, I was thrilled because the book spoke to me directly. At the time I picked it up, I was passing through a low point in my life, when the world could not offer me anything meaningful. But I said to myself, “Oh, this writer and this book know me vividly—that I am spiritual, immortal, and a thinker!” Learning about Christian Science removed the cobwebs and fear from my thought. I began to give up a lot of little habits that were selfish and self-centered. And I began to have healings.

One Sunday in May 2007, I was serving as First Reader of my local Christian Science branch church, when I felt numb on the right side of my body—from my head through my leg. This happened during the service, and I motioned for someone to come up and help me to a chair. The thought of my daughter and my wife, who had just started a course on Christian Science nursing in another country, occupied my attention. I wished my wife could have been there to comfort me, and I felt engrossed in a world of melancholy, despondency, and gloom.

I was angry and disappointed because I felt that the spiritual truths I’d just been speaking in the church service were being challenged. But I’d had healings in Christian Science before, so I knew it was natural to prove that God was Love, and that He’d never cause suffering or pain. Within a few minutes, my other daughter came to me and told me that God was in control and that He loved me. Healing dawned in my thoughts that very moment, even though the symptoms of paralysis were still present.

A Christian Science practitioner took my case at once, and my fear that my sisters and brothers wouldn’t agree to my having Christian Science treatment was harmoniously resolved.

My prayers that day stayed simple. The main thing that stood out was that I could maintain my spiritual innocence, purity, and faultlessness as an idea of God. It also became important to deny that the claim of error, or evil, could have control of my thinking.

Over the next week I stayed in my bedroom, and my family helped bring me meals and assisted me when I needed to stand up. Praying about this challenge became a period of reassessment of what it meant to me to have a Christlike understanding—an understanding that denies disease any substance or reality. I thought a lot about God and His omnipotence, and didn’t react to the symptoms of paralysis, since I was learning God was nevertheless in total control. Mary Baker Eddy wrote in Science and Health, “We lose the high signification of omnipotence, when after admitting that God, or good, is omnipresent and has all-power, we still believe there is another power, named evil” (Science and Health, p. 469).

I often thought, What is this evil that is opposing my love for God and His idea, man and woman created in His image and likeness? But as I prayed, I stopped puzzling about the cause of the condition when I realized more fully that paralysis, or the aggressive mental suggestion of numbness, is only a mirage or an illusion. I saw that I didn’t need to react, either by being afraid or hating that I was faced with this difficult experience. In absolute truth, there is no disease in the world, so I was safe. Divine Mind, God, is All and also infinite.

My physical progress was gradual, step by step, although I was so absorbed in learning spiritual truths that I did not put my focus on this improvement.

Knowing and understanding more of my spiritual integrity and oneness with God helped me see that my inseparability from Him was assured. And I saw this was true for everyone. We can prove the nothingness of a power opposed to God by insisting that we are perfect, spiritual ideas of divine Mind.

Within seven days, I left my bed and came out from my bedroom alone, without any support. My family rejoiced over my complete recovery. Most important was there was no fear as I continued to participate in church services, even singing solos. I do this with full freedom, up to this very minute!

Emmanuel Goncalves Quist | Lagos, Nigeria