The road to freedom
For as long as I could remember, I'd had trouble breathing through my nose. Now my doctor had given me a medication to help. And I was excited by the possibility that my breathing could finally be normal.
At the same time, while leaving the doctor's office on that cold January afternoon, I couldn't help thinking of how other people had certainly had that exciting moment of expecting to be really free of some health problem. Yet, so many of them would have said the excitement had faded long ago for them. That after years of taking medications, their hopes had never really been fulfilled.
I'd been starting to look into healing through prayer to God. The Bible and another book on spiritual healing were introducing me to the concept that real healing takes place in our consciousness - and that a beneficial physical change then follows as a result of the mental one.
I was finding out that God loves us and has given every one of us an inherent ability to stay free and well. I suspect I was beginning to glimpse what a Bible writer must have seen when he wrote, "And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion" (Gen. 1:26). To comprehend this dominion is life-transforming.
Suddenly, the question for me was: Can I be healed? And can I do it without drugs?
Amid these thoughts, something happened. I recognized that the breathing trouble was not natural to me, and I suddenly felt such dominion over it that I knew I would be healed without the medication. So, I never took it. I didn't feel this was a rash decision, but rather that it came as the result of a solid conviction.
God's healing solutions for us are entirely spiritual - that is, they involve knowledge of our identity as His children. God is Spirit. And His children are, by nature, spiritual. A healing is fundamentally a change in the way an individual sees himself or herself. As St. Paul wrote, "Be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind, that ye may prove what is that good, and acceptable, and perfect, will of God" (Rom. 12:2).
Health is the perfect will of God for all His children. Freedom from dependency on prescription drugs can begin for anyone who gains a conviction of spiritual identity and dominion. Taking control of how one thinks of oneself is exercising the right of self-government that God gives to all of us. Prayer brings into view the spiritual, inherently healthy state of being we have as God's very expression. This never needs to be, never can be, dependent on drugs and medications.
The other book about healing I read was Mary Baker Eddy's "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures." In it she wrote: "The schools have rendered faith in drugs the fashion, rather than faith in Deity. By trusting matter to destroy its own discord, health and harmony have been sacrificed. Such systems are barren of the vitality of spiritual power, by which material sense is made the servant of Science and religion becomes Christlike" (pg. 146).
True health is in and of God, the divine Mind. Drugs sometimes offer relief, but they don't bring the permanent health and well-being that everyone deserves. And many people have questioned whether the relief that medications offer is found only in proportion to the faith placed in them. As human beliefs and faith fluctuate, prescription drugs can have a variety of effects, including negative ones.
Healing through divine Mind is an entirely dignifying experience. And it works regardless of someone's past medical history. My growing understanding of my spiritual identity brought me permanent healing of the breathing problem. I saw more clearly that spiritual healing involves much more than just not taking a pill; it is an active commitment to discovering the perfect nature that is ours because we are made to express the perfect qualities of God, including health. It is a recognition that, as those words from Genesis say, God created us without problems, and with complete dominion and health. I found the commitment to be well worth making.
(c) Copyright 1999. The Christian Science Publishing Society
