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Praying about The Weather & Natural Disasters: An Ex Christian Science Perspective

wildfire in California

 The following are thoughts and notes on the current natural disasters that are hitting the globe, by Chrystal. 

To begin …

Well, first off, I just want to say these are sort of disjointed thoughts I’ve had over the years and I am still formulating my thoughts around these concepts. I guess the “uncovering” of random Christian Science thinking and trying to sort out what I believe and what I don’t believe. So, thank you for your patience when I type something disjointed like this blog post.

I look forward to reading your own thoughts and comments and stories in the comments below.

I started typing this post as our nation is recovering from Hurricane Harvey and we braced ourselves for Hurricane Irma. It always takes me a while to type these, think, edit, think some more, edit some more…. As I edit this paragraph, a 10th earthquake has hit Mexico in 6 days.

Deny strongly enough, then you will prove “it’s not real”

I am surrounded by climate change deniers. We have had so many weather disasters. So many. The turmoil on the continent where I live due to National Disasters …. is – for me – nearly unspeakable. All those people, and animals, and buildings and trees – destroyed. Turned to rubble.

I lived at Principia College when a major flood came through and destroyed the whole area. The flood lines are painted on that flour mill in Alton, Illinois.

All of this is heart-breaking to me. I grew up in a thought system that taught me to DENY EVERYTHING I can sense with my 5 senses. 

If you can see, hear, taste, touch, smell it – then IT’S NOT REAL. Only the things you CAN’T see, hear, taste, touch smell – only THOSE are real!

Christian Science teaches:”Be happy – constantly! No matter what you see, because the bad stuff isn’t real at all! Be happy it’s not real! Rejoice! Be glad!”  

Climate deniers:

I am done denying what’s RIGHT IN FRONT OF ME. Been there, done that. Let’s get to work, people. Stop the blame and finger pointing. Be open to tough choices and difficult conclusions and difficult decisions.

Christian Scientists are taught that they can control the weather

I was long taught that we could “still the storm,” as Jesus supposedly did on that boat.

Jesus Calms the Storm

35 That day when evening came, he said to his disciples, “Let us go over to the other side.”
36 Leaving the crowd behind, they took him along, just as he was, in the boat. There were also other boats with him.
37 A furious squall came up, and the waves broke over the boat, so that it was nearly swamped.
38 Jesus was in the stern, sleeping on a cushion. The disciples woke him and said to him, “Teacher, don’t you care if we drown?”
39 He got up, rebuked the wind and said to the waves, “Quiet! Be still!” Then the wind died down and it was completely calm.
40 He said to his disciples, “Why are you so afraid? Do you still have no faith?”
41 They were terrified and asked each other, “Who is this? Even the wind and the waves obey him!”
– Mark 4: 35-41

And, to accompany the Jesus story, we have, of course, Mary Baker Eddy’s “demonstration” of it. Christian Science teaches children that Mary Baker Eddy once stilled a tornado:

Mrs. Eddy’s maid was working in the room where Mrs. Eddy was and all of a sudden it got very dark and it surprised her so much that she looked out of the window back of Mrs. Eddy and saw a most terrible storm. There were black clouds shaped like funnels rolling around and coming straight towards Mrs. Eddy’s home. She had never seen anything like it. Then she went out of the room about her work and when she came back in a short time afterwards, Mrs. Eddy said to her: “Have you looked out of the window?” No, she had not; but she did and there was all sunshine and clear sky. The storm had disappeared.

– A report of Mrs. Eddy’s healing work compiled by Arthur F. Fosbery, an early Christian Scientist.

My memory of being told another story is that Mary Baker Eddy had her household staff stand on her balcony and face a tornado without fear, and that it went back up in to the sky. It’s probably in one of those biographical books: “We Knew Mary Baker Eddy.”

Pray about the weather

I cannot possibly count how many times I’ve been told to pray about the weather because “someone is getting married that day!” Or that “it’s raining because it’s someone’s funeral and everyone is sad.” Or that “that’s the day of our Christian Science Lecture, pray for nice weather!” If the weather is something we can see and feel, why do we pray about it? It’s not real, you opposite loving people that deny everything logical and say that YOU’RE being the logical ones!

What about prayer?

Every time I turn around, I see more people sending prayers and good thoughts to people that are stuck in areas where a natural disaster is imminent, and for whatever reason, they are unable to evacuate. If you have read very much on this site, you will see that many of us have found that prayer does absolutely NOTHING practical, and many of our family members and friends have died thanks to having only prayer done for them, and nothing practical. This breaks our hearts! I think many of us are fine with the concept of prayer, frankly, but the use of prayer to the exclusion of all else – is dangerous!

The use of prayer to the exclusion of all else is dangerous!

That joke we have all heard

There is a story of a man on a roof and the flood waters are rising. Several attempts are made to save this man and get him to safety. The man ignores all the attempts and thinks a miracle will fall down from heaven and save him. The man eventually dies.

I feel like this describes Christian Scientists that refuse to evacuate when told to evacuate. “God will save me,” they say.

“Real” Legends:

House fire – everything burns except S&H and The Bible

I kid you not that I grew up being told a story of the time a fire struck a house of Christian Scientists. I was told “they were protected and weren’t home at the time.” When these people went back through the wreckage, “everything was destroyed.”

The only things that survived from the fire, unscathed, were their copies of The Holy Bible and Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures by Mary Baker Eddy, which had “fallen from the burned coffee table, to the floor of the house, and they weren’t even singed.” “Everything else was burned.”

I kid you not, this story was drilled in to me as a kid.

Dying in wildfires

I learned another story recently, many current day Christian Science folks corroborated it, too, some of whom knew the couple and heard they had died, but hadn’t been told how:

An older Christian Science couple refused to evacuate their house in California during wild fires. They were killed in the fire. These people were named, and the story was verified by people that knew the people, and knew the story.

Christian Science Camp

I heard a story about something that happened at a Christian Science camp from someone who was there at the time. The girls were on a camping trip, away from their cabins. They were sleeping on a hill above a river. I have personally observed the director of that camp praying extensively about the weather. He keeps a close watch on the weather with a radar.

I am certain the counselors and this director were praying about the weather, to know that it couldn’t possibly harm the girls, and that they could turn the storm.

Well, in the middle of the night (I want to say 3am), the director of the camp arrived in a camp vehicle, where the girls were sleeping. He told all of them to get up, bring their things, and get in the vehicle. As the last girl got in the vehicle, and closed the door, torrents of rain poured down all around them. The next morning, the area where the girls had been asleep was completely flooded.

These are stories Christian Scientists share with each other constantly, to talk about how they were “protected from the weather.” This is one way they share the concept that “Christian Science works.” If it works, why couldn’t he redirect the storm instead of watching on the storm radar, then rescuing them at the last minute? Why not trust the forecast a bit more and just reschedule the trip? Save everyone the bother of probably having wet sleeping bags when they got back to camp, and an interrupted night’s sleep?

That time I prayed about the weather

More than a decade ago, I was at an art festival in a major metropolitan city. At the time, I was on the path towards becoming a Journal-listed Christian Science Practitioner. Suddenly, out of no where, a torrential rain hit the festival. There were tents at the food court area, and everyone who could, crammed in under the tents. I remember being on the edge of the tent – it was shoulder-to-shoulder people.

I stood there, under the tent, water nearly pouring down my back. I was barely inside it, standing with my husband. I thought, “I can pray about this and end the storm.” (Seriously; I believed that.) But then I thought about all the plants and trees and things that desperately needed water. So, I decided to look at it from a different perspective. Immediately, I thought, “Who am I to try to end a storm?”

I had prayed in years past to understand “The Kingdom of Heaven” as being here, right now, all the time. So I decided to just see “The Kingdom of Heaven” right then, right there. I looked around and observed that whereas 15 minutes before, people had been at the food court, standing in line, ignoring each other, now they were all standing shoulder-to-shoulder, and a camaraderie from a shared experience started to form. People were laughing, joking, scooting over to let each other in. A game of frisbee even started up inside that tent.

I felt like I had witnessed a change in the weather – but in a new way! This was one of those “healings” that stuck with me for a long time and proved that “Christian Science works.”

In all honesty, I am not entirely sure what I think of this now, but it is something I have thought about a lot, over the years.

[Ok, as I continue editing this, I see how funny that is. I didn’t do anything at all, just standing there, watching people come together in a disaster or perceived disaster. Go, me! (Hopefully you’re laughing along with me now.)]

Some people, these days, might consider my experience “positive thinking.” Perhaps it is. It’s looking at what could be a miserable experience (wanting to see the art festival, and suddenly finding yourself stuck inside a tent with “a million” people in torrential rain), and seeing it in a new way – seeing it in a positive light.

Is this a form of prayer? I don’t know. Is it positive thinking? Yes. Is it a healing? I don’t know. It’s definitely a change in thought. I welcome your thoughts on this experience! Because I still don’t quite know what to make of this experience.

Peace, Be Still

I went to a Unity Church one time when I was still a Christian Scientist, working towards becoming Journal-listed. I was there for a Christian Science Monitor event. It was interesting to set foot in a Unity Church. I had never been to one before. One of the walls had the quote, “Peace, Be Still,” painted on it, in large dark blue letters. I sat there, reading those words, as I listened to this Christian Science Monitor presentation.

After the presentation was over, I went to the Unity Minister (a woman) and told her my experience in the torrential storm, and my own change of thought. She loved the story. I wonder if she is sharing that, right now, in her sermons when she talks about Hurricanes Harvey, Irma and Jose … and what about the 6 days of Earthquakes that have been going on in Mexico? 6 days of Earthquakes in Mexico so far. Roll that around in your brain for just a moment. (I know by saying “brain,” every Christian Scientist reader just reminded themselves that “man is not made up of brain…” Hahaha! That’s my humor coming out.)

“Question. — What is man?
Answer. — Man is not matter; he is not made up of brain, blood, bones, and other material elements.”

– Science and Health, p. 475: 5

I Believe the Earth is Trying to Heal Herself

My current belief system says that Mother Earth is trying to heal herself. She is literally flooding trying to cool herself off. The icebergs and glaciers are melting. Torrents of rain hit some places, severe drought hits other places. The planet is trying to balance itself out. This equates 100% to me to Stewardship, recycling, CO2 issues, methane gas from animal agriculture…

Thoughts on Recycling

You may or may not remember when I wrote about running a Vacation Bible School for Christian Science children with a friend. One time, when I was at her house, I noticed that she threw all of her recycling in to the trash can. I felt like this was such a contradiction to who she is as a person. I asked her as nicely as I could about it. She told me that sometimes she sneaks out recycling, but it really bothers her husband, so most of the time she can’t do it. Her husband believes that global warming is a hoax and so is recycling. He says if it wasn’t a hoax, then people would actually PAY for it, instead of having it be funded even partially by the government. Therefore, it’s a governmental hoax.

She also said, “besides, matter isn’t real.” Oh, right. I guess since I can see it and feel it, it’s not real. I simply cannot wrap my head around the Christian Science attitude that is so anti-recycling. They all have different reasons for it. But they all think it’s just not necessary. Genesis 1 in The Bible says God told us to take care of this planet. My dad constantly told me, “the first four words of the Bible are: ‘in the beginning God‘.” So I feel like this first chapter of Genesis is an important story, above all other stories, to Christian Scientists. And yet, they don’t honor the basic tenant that God told mankind to take care of the planet.

Where do we go from here?

I guess from my Ex Christian Science perspective, I feel that prayer alone is useless against the weather. Seriously. Get out of your closet. Unfold your hands. And go DO something. You think that riding your bike will help with global warming? It’s a drop in the bucket of what needs to be changed. Do some research on animal agriculture. Plant a vegetable garden. Try to eat local foods whenever possible. Think about how you might be able to reduce your trash (there is no “away” when you throw something away. It goes somewhere… it’s just no longer in your home). You can recycle a whole lot more than you think you can!

I guess I am thinking, as I type this and ponder the topic, that prayer alone about the weather doesn’t actually affect it. The Quaker in me says, “We need to talk about Stewardship. Let’s leave this world BETTER than we found it – not worse.”

And God saw the earth that he had made and said, “behold, it is very good.” Then man came along, and screwed it all the hell up. Can we affect the weather? Yes. Absolutely. Choices that we make every day affect the planet. Like the “butterfly affect.”

Let’s NOT “go in to our closet, shut the door and pray without ceasing.” Cease your prayers and do some serious thinking about how you can be a positive change for the world! If we all work together, we can accomplish something good! THAT’s how we change the weather for the better.

image via https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_disaster#/media/File:Wildfire_in_California.jpg

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Chrystal’s Story: My Second Lump (Part 2)

Chrystal's Story header image

This is part of an on-going series, for all posts in this series see the tag Chrystal’s Story.

A note from Chrystal: I was born a fourth-generation Christian Scientist, and finally left the religion when I was in my 40s. In this blog series, I will do my best to share with you my 40+ year journey. I have done my best to make the journey sequential, but it’s also themed to a large extent, and sometimes it has been necessary to take things out of sequence to share a theme. 

My Second Lump (Part 2)

The following is a flashback to when I was nearing the end of my branch church membership, with a problem that had spanned more than a decade of my life:

The growing lipoma on my back was now causing so much pain to my neck, that I couldn’t straighten my head for a few days at times. And, of course, being in Christian Science, I couldn’t take Advil to even relieve the pain. I remember walking around with tears in my eyes over the amount of pain I was in, and hiding in my house. I was raised to hide in my house when I was in pain. How can a community reach out to help you, when you’re hiding in your house? I remember a Mormon woman who lived in my neighborhood, and for some reason socially, she stopped by my house and we had a little visit, and I couldn’t straighten my head up that day. She so lovingly said to me, “that looks really painful.” I assured her I was fine, that it had happened before, and I would be fine soon. I was NOT fine! I couldn’t straighten my head, I had tears in my eyes, and if I tried to move my head in any way, I would cry out in incredible pain! I remember the love in her eyes. She was genuinely concerned for my well-being, and she was only a neighbor; I know now that if I ever needed someone to help me, and I called her, I know she would be there for me, even though I wouldn’t consider us “friends.” She was my neighbor and she has genuine love in her heart for humanity.

After a decade of praying with various practitioners (including my Teacher) about the lump, I remember feeling discouraged. I was so discouraged. I would rally myself and pray again. Because Christian Scientists are supposed to “yield not to discouragement.”

Individuals are consistent who, watching and praying, can “run, and not be weary; . . .walk, and not faint,” who gain good rapidly and hold their position, or attain slowly and yield not to discouragement. God requires perfection, but not until the battle between Spirit and flesh is fought and the victory won. – “Science and Health,” p. 254

Christian Scientists are taught that “discouragement makes the problem worse, and makes it harder to heal.” So I prayed. I payed practitioners to pray. I payed my Teacher to pray.  

I would see the 2 ladies at my second branch church who had the growths on them that were more pronounced, and I didn’t want to end up like that. Mine, at least, I could hide by wearing a patterned shirt. They couldn’t hide theirs any longer, no matter how they tried. I felt so sorry for them, to not be able to hide their problem any longer. And then I would chastise myself for thinking such things. I wanted to hug them and say, “I have a lump too, but I can hide mine,” but for someone to speak up & say, “I see your problem and I want to support you and share love with you” is verboten in the Christian Science culture. Speaking up about it makes it “more real.” Because by not speaking, it’s “not real.”

Our voice is given so much power in Christian Science. Apparently, just talking can do many things – it can make lumps grow, it can cause fevers, poison ivy, infectious diseases. It can ruin vacations, it can rain fire and brimstone on a bad church member. I am positive they believe words can kill, so they won’t speak unless it is cheerful, superficial, happy nonsense. I am wondering if I believe it is this sort of thing that drives people completely insane. (Denying our very existence, to our core. How can it keep us sane and normal if we deny 100% of our humanity?)

At some point, probably a year after my wonderful success with the “Church Alive” experience, I decided it was time to get this lump removed from my shoulder, by a medical doctor. It had gone on long enough. My arm would go to sleep for 45 minutes at a time, and I couldn’t wake it up. And that didn’t feel good to me. (It scares me a lot now that I am out of Christian Science and someone pointed out that this was pushing on a nerve, and it’s a good thing I didn’t have to lose my whole arm!) I voluntarily pulled my name out of “The Christian Science Journal.” (This means I was no longer a Journal Listed Christian Science Practitioner. I wasn’t kicked out or anything; I chose to do this for my own reasons. I left on good terms and was told I could come back within 6 months if I wanted, if it was longer than that, I would have to apply from scratch again.)

Then, began the guilt. Oh, the guilt. And I had no one to talk to about it. I had to suffer with my guilt at having “failed.” I had failed to heal it. I had failed to have enough faith. I had failed to pray enough. I had failed all the Practitioners that had prayed for me over the last 5+ years.

I know all the words to victim blame myself, and I made liberal use of all of them. Then, of course, I probably entered the depression that had probably started but been bulldozed over by “Knowing the Truth” and “Getting on with things I had to do anyway.” So I dealt with depression and guilt with the only way I knew how: by denying them. For months. I think it took me about 8 months to get over the guilt, and I finally started trying to find a doctor. (At this point, I was now a Sunday School teacher at the Unity Church.)

Now, someone who grew up going to doctors, might know where to start when looking for a doctor. But this was all brand new to me. I didn’t know how to find a doctor. (The doctor who removed my first lump, wasn’t covered by our new insurance.) I didn’t know what kind of doctor I wanted. It took me many months to find one. And of course, you can’t just walk in and say, “remove this please.” They had to send me to another doctor for a sonogram to look at it. Then results had to be done up. Then I had to have a consultation. Then I had to go to the operation. I was put under for the procedure (that was my choice – because the pain of the much smaller lump had been unbearable to me, and I couldn’t go through that again). I think this was in 2011. Then I had so many follow up appointments. The lump was far bigger than I had anticipated, and than he had anticipated. I have keloids in my back with basically means, “aggressive scar tissue,” and this scar on my back continues to grow and cause me pain years later. I consider this scar to be my “scar of leaving Christian Science.” Maybe someday I will wear it proudly. At this point, I still hide it under clothing. (I know of people getting tattoos to symbolize leaving the Christian Science church. I didn’t have to get a tattoo. I have my very real scar on my material body.)

I wish that was the end of my story of leaving Christian Science. That would wrap it all up, neat and tidy. But, of course, a 44 year story and it doesn’t just end there. And it’s now 2016 as I type this.

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6 Weeks to a Quaker (the first go-round)

I grew up as a church goer, and when I don’t attend, it feels like I have a “void” in my life. So I tried a local Quaker church. It was about 10 miles away, but traffic made it take about 40 minutes to get there on a Sunday morning. I took my oldest son with me to the Meetings, and I enjoyed them immensely. Here were people who cared about the environment. One person was a beekeeper and I loved that! Several were gardeners, and some were activists or worked as volunteers either in Peace Corps or in Africa, setting up a school to teach children. I loved everything about this church. I made my homemade applesauce for potluck, and I was instantly accepted as one of these people.

After about 4 weeks of attending, I called up my family and told them, “I am a Quaker now!” I think my own family thinks I am changeable and whack-a-doo, so they took it in stride. I also called a gal from my Association who completely and lovingly supported me (she left our Association the following year & converted to Judaism), and I called our Teacher who asked me, “what’s appealing about the Quaker church?” I told her I liked sitting in the Silence, and how that brought me peace and calm for several days after in my life. After that, she told our Association (an Association is an annual meeting of the students taught by the Teacher, and guests the Teacher welcomes too) to try to meditate for 20 minutes every day.

My 6th Sunday in a row attending at The Quaker Meeting was potluck Sunday. I asked the lady next to me what it took to join the church. She told me, “well, you’re assigned some people to make sure you are spiritually growing.” I hadn’t yet felt like I was leaving Christian Science; I was just leaving the branch church, and I still wanted my own Bible and my copy of Science and Health. Her comment made me so uncomfortable, I couldn’t return to the church. I blamed the traffic. It was so far away, even though it really wasn’t; traffic just made it feel so much more far away. I started visiting other kinds of churches.

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Chrystal’s Story: What’s Next?

Chrystal's Story header image

This is part of an on-going series, for all posts in this series see the tag Chrystal’s Story.

A note from Chrystal: I was born a fourth-generation Christian Scientist, and finally left the religion when I was in my 40s. In this blog series, I will do my best to share with you my 40+ year journey. I have done my best to make the journey sequential, but it’s also themed to a large extent, and sometimes it has been necessary to take things out of sequence to share a theme. 

My Second Lump. (Part 1)

After that first cyst was removed in high school, over the years I had many cysts develop in various places on my body, and melt. I got used to them. I always prayed and they always went away. I always thought they were “healed.”

Somewhere before I became a church member (early 2000s?), I started having shoulder issues. I went to a massage therapist weekly trying to get the pained muscle to loosen up. I am not sure massage worked. (I felt like such a rebel, since massage is also not allowed in Christian Science.) I started having shoulder cartilage issues. I chalked it up to being a lifetime violin player. I tried physical exercise and massage therapy and nothing worked. At some point, a lump appeared, and while I am forgetting all the specific history, I remember finally going to a dermatologist.

He said it was fatty tissue probably, and I paid him to remove it. He used only novocaine, and the procedure hurt like he was tearing my skin, though he assured me he wasn’t. It hurt so badly. The next day, the lump was back. The lump was back the next day. In my Christian Science thinking, this meant that I had clearly not healed my thought about it, thus, painful surgery was for naught. I have since deduced that there must have been 2 lumps, and the 2nd one was never removed and simply moved over to the space that was now vacant after surgery. It took me years to become ok getting it removed again. In the meantime, it grew and grew and wreaked havoc all over my whole shoulder, neck and arm area (see: My Second Lump – Part 2). And I prayed and prayed in Christian Science to no avail.

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Church Hopping

Starting in maybe 2009, I started church bouncing to other denominations. I tried a Quaker church near that 3rd branch church and went there for 6 weeks. It was just too far.

I went to a Unitarian Universalist Church, and the anti-Christian sentiment there was too strong for me. I never complained about it, but I heard other Christians complaining about it. I asked them if I could have a Christian Science Thanksgiving service there on Thanksgiving, and the ministers said, “it’s just not our mission.” And I felt shoved out. I thought it was a church that was supposed to accept all beliefs, but it wasn’t my experience when I was there. They accepted Ex Jews, Ex Catholics and Buddhists as far as I could tell, and I wasn’t any of those categories. I tried Unity next, and had a falling out that I repaired recently (3 years later) with the woman who leads the children’s education. So, Unity (an offshoot of Christian Science – you can google it https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emma_Curtis_Hopkins , https://smile.amazon.com/Emma-Curtis-Hopkins-Forgotten-Religion/dp/0815629338?ie=UTF8&*Version*=1&*entries*=0 ) didn’t work for me either. At Unity, I learned that Christian Science is part of the “New Thought Movement,” though I know that Christian Scientists would absolutely disagree about being placed into any category like that. (Christian Scientists say they hate categories.)

Interestingly enough, the first time I walked in the door, someone pointed out someone else who had found Unity as an Ex-Christian Scientist. I introduced myself to him and he said, “Well, you know, Mary Baker Eddy’s writings are all plagiarized from Phineas Quimby.” I was horrified! My dad had written a paper at university with research by Robert Peel all about how she did not plagiarize (this paper can be found in the Mary Baker Eddy Library archives: http://www.marybakereddylibrary.org/about/contact/research-questions/). After my dad’s death, I have learned the truth: yes, she did. Absolutely. (And I went through heartbreak that my dad had been completely fooled by Robert Peel all those years ago.) The whole “divinely authorized” thing is completely bogus. Sorry to break it to any CS folks reading this, but there are documented resources. Quimby’s own writings for side-by-side comparison can be found cheaply on Amazon. https://smile.amazon.com/Quimby-Manuscripts-Phineas-Parkhurst-ebook/dp/B00O0AFXOY?ie=UTF8&keywords=phineas%20quimby&qid=1464963913&ref_=sr_1_2&sr=8-2

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Time for me to take this “going to doctors thing” a bit more seriously…

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Earache Story (Part 2)

A few years after leaving branch church membership, I wasn’t feeling well. I may have had the flu or bronchitis brought on by allergies that got worse every year (though I never knew they were allergies; I just knew it was what I called in my head “seasonal issues”); they were starting to come twice a year now instead of once a year, and were getting prolonged for weeks. My son who had the ear issues from years before (remember the painful ear that never drained the next day?), also wasn’t feeling well. He did not want to go to the doctor with me, but I felt it was the right idea. So I made him go with me. We were both so scared. But we went anyway. The doctor diagnosed both of us with bronchitis, and gave us a prescription for antibiotics. Then she looked at my son and said, “does anything else hurt?” He said, “my ear hurts sometimes.” She pulled out the thing they use to look in ears, and saw something in there that didn’t belong. She showed me. She tried to get it out, but it made him scream in pain.

She said, “we need to get that out of there.” She said it was resting on his ear drum, so every time they barely touched it, it hurt him terribly. So she said, “we need to put him under so we can get it out of there.” Oh my gosh, I was so scared. I mean: really scared.

I thought they were basically telling me, “we are going to kill your son, when would you like to make the appointment for?” It took a whole lot of faith to be ok with this appointment, and to trust that he would wake up after having been “put under.”

I cannot emphasize enough how scared I was about it. I made the appointment for like 2 days later and did my best not to live with a high heart rate and panic mode the whole time. I took him to the hospital, having followed instructions about food and such. They told him the sleeping gas would “smell like smelly shoes.” And he laughed. When they put the mask on his face, he shoved it away so hard and started yelling at them and yelling for me. I went into panic mode to save my son, and they had to usher me out of the room. I was a complete wreck. About 11 minutes later, they came to get me, and told me it had all been done in under 2 minutes, and he was waking up now. I was so relieved! He was fine!! They showed me what had been in his ear: it had been a very small pirate coin from a toy pirate set (https://www.amazon.com/PLAYMOBIL%C2%AE-5135-PLAYMOBIL-Pirates-Ship/dp/B004P5O8MM ). My husband (who is a magician), joked, “he is the first person to actually take a coin out of his ear!” We still have that coin in a surgical container around here somewhere.

Around that point, I also started going to a dermatologist for skin issues I have always had. I have keloids on my shoulders. I have some moles on my back that are pretty big, thanks to “not believing in sun block.”  I also have acne, and have had acne since 4th grade. I was never allowed to use benzoyl peroxide. That was completely forbidden. The amount of teasing “why don’t you take care of that, it’s so easy!” And my stubborn sense that “no, if I do that, it won’t be healed! I have to heal it!” Is such a bunch of silliness. Why let a child be tortured for decades when a solution is so easy? Now that I am over 40 years old, almost 45, I have discovered Noxema and benzoyl peroxide. Wow. What a miracle cure! (And I keep forgetting to use it! #NoThankYouChristianScience)

I had prayed and prayed about the lipoma on my back. It had come back immediately after that first surgery, and it was not being healed in Christian Science. This was such a big struggle for me. I fervently felt like “God must want me to have this, so it’s not being healed, so it is here so that I can grow spiritually and heal it.” And at some point, after having worked with so many practitioners and also my Teacher on this issue for years, I finally decided to walk away from branch church membership and walk towards “going to doctors.”