I was in Mexico, staying with some friends while visiting a boyfriend. In order to heat the water for a shower or bath, I had to climb up on the roof and light the heater. Well, when I did this, I turned on the gas full blast ( instead of just the pilot setting), and then lit the match. The whole thing exploded in my face, burning off my eyelashes, brows and forehead hair and scorching my skin with second degree burns.
Immediately my friends came to help. They knew that I would be relying on Christian Science for healing, so helped me get comfortable and then left me alone to pray and be quiet. My face was so hot, I kept applying wet cloths to it. This would relieve the pain temporarily, until I had to get new cloths.
I called on a Christian Science practitioner who lived in Chicago. It is very common in Christian Science that the practitioner, or healer, live someplace other than where the patient lives. Prayer has no boundaries and the important part in Christian Science is that a person connects to the patient, as prayer impacts thought and thought determines the physical. Distance does not hinder healing.
We prayed using a Bible story of protection from fire. In this story, three individuals were falsely accused and thrown into a furnace as punishment. The story goes on to explain the confident prayer of these three and their understanding that God is there protecting them. The spiritual law illustrated in this story was that I too am protected, under God's care at all times. Fire is not more powerful than God.
Another spiritual law applied to the situation was that I am a spiritual idea, not material. Just as the number 5 cannot be altered when "put" into a fire, who I am as a child of God cannot be altered.
Another spiritual law applied to this situation was that thought governs experience. Thought, aligned with good, has its foundation in omnipresent, omnipotent God. There is no room for pain, deterioration, or disfiguration in God's kingdom. As His child, I cannot reflect anything unlike Him.
The result? The pain went away immediately, once I stopped putting cold compresses on my skin. It no longer made sense to try to accommodate the physical once I was clear about my spiritual identity. My hair grew back naturally and the skin healed with no marks.
But my concept of beauty took a major shift. Here I was visiting a boyfriend and definitely wanting to look hot -- but NOT this way! I saw that beauty is a spiritual quality, not one that can be determined by manipulating the appearance of eyes, losing weight, styling one's hair a certain way. All that is fun, but the deeper reality of beauty lies in the spiritual qualities it radiates.
"Beauty is a thing of life....." Mary Baker Eddy writes in Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures. "Immortal men and women are models of spiritual sense, drawn by perfect Mind
and reflecting those higher conceptions of loveliness which transcend all material sense...."
She goes on to write an entire beauty treatment. Start here and just keep reading!
The lesson about God's protection and immortal beauty still intrigues me today. My concept of beauty is much more universal, far less restrictive and as a result, I see more beauty around me everday.
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