Who hasn’t at one time or another looked at someone else and wished we had what they had? Maybe it was their professional success, or perhaps a seemingly perfect family, or their worry-free lifestyle. It is tempting to think that such things come easily to some people and not so easily to the rest of us. But things aren’t always as they appear.

Behind every appearance there is often an untold story.

So it is with healing. The ease with which healings can seem to occur for others often belies whole character transformations, tireless life journeys, and sacrifices that forged the healers’ ability to make the process look so effortless. Healing is a result of spiritual mindedness—of acknowledging the operation of divine Principle, God, and rejecting any suggestions of imperfection, anything unlike God. This state of consciousness may come naturally to some, while others seem to struggle greatly to shed the fetters of a material sense of life.

My early years as a Christian Scientist were marked by an overly simplistic view of healing. I wanted to heal like Jesus, but I was unwilling to surrender all of the material attractions I enjoyed. I convinced myself that living a good, moral life would keep me out of harm’s way and grant me the right to expect quick and effective healings.

I realize now that I went through the motions of being a Christian Scientist—studying the weekly Bible Lessons published in the Christian Science Quarterly, and attending Sunday School and the Wednesday evening testimony meetings at church. I even prayed for myself, but it wasn’t always with earnest intent. I usually left the heavy lifting—the real conscientious, inspired praying—to the Christian Science practitioners, when I would enlist one to pray for me when I was most challenged; and I’m ashamed to admit that they sometimes invested themselves more in the healing work than I did. I rarely was willing to put my active schedule aside and quietly listen for God’s guidance. Then I had a wake-up call.

Some friends and I went tubing on a creek we had no business being on. The water was high and swift. Shortly after starting our run, I hit a rock and lost my grip on my tube, leaving me with no way to pull myself to the surface for air. I had already broken the first commandment of whitewater sports: Always wear a life preserver. Before I knew it, I was rolling like a log on the bottom of the creek, totally helpless to stop myself. At that moment, I had only two options—prove my faith, or not live to tell about it. It was crunch time.

I have since come to understand that to become better healers—for ourselves, others, and the world—we need to practice what we already know.

I don’t remember how I prayed, just that it was a fervent affirmation of God’s protecting presence—an effort to turn my thought away from the frightening evidence before me. Whatever it was, it lifted my thought above the fear and gave me a spark of hope. It was then that I struck something stationary and became pinned underwater. Out of air and struggling against the current, I could not stand. Just when it seemed as if there was nothing I could do, I felt someone grab me and pull me to the surface. It was one of my friends. He had seen me go under and had braced himself downstream, hoping that by some remote chance I might roll into his legs so he could rescue me. To this day I know that it could only have been prayer that guided both him and me.

I have since come to understand that to become better healers—for ourselves, others, and the world—we need to practice what we already know. Merely routine attendance at church services or skimming over the weekly Bible Lesson each day does not constitute the whole of our practice any more than the rituals of the Pharisees, whom Jesus likened to “whited sepulchres” (Matthew 23:27). Their pious outward appearance betrayed the fact that their lives were devoid of spiritual purpose.

If we are to gain the prize of spiritual healing, there is work to be done.

Mary Baker Eddy, who committed her life to bringing Christian Science to the world, offered this prayer to her followers: “May God enable my students to take up the cross as I have done, and meet the pressing need of a proper preparation of heart to practise, teach, and live Christian Science!” (Miscellaneous Writings 1883–1896, p. 115). God has enabled us in this endeavor, by giving us the Comforter—divine Science—and the textbook, Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures by Mrs. Eddy, which not only explains the Science of being but shows us how to practice it. It is up to us to pick up the banner and carry it forward.

When we daily strive to obtain a more constant sense of our oneness with God, we begin to bring this understanding into everything we do, and we find that we do not have to rebuild our confidence every time we have a need. “Commit thy works unto the Lord,” the Bible says, “and thy thoughts shall be established” (Proverbs 16:3). As we commit ourselves to deeper study and conscientious prayer—asking God to show us what we need to know, then listening for and following His leading—confidence in our ability to lean trustingly on the Father’s guidance gradually increases. We become more like minutemen who are ready and able to take on any challenge to our sense of God’s constant care for His beloved children.

The earnest student knows that it is living the truth, and not just knowing and affirming the letter of truth, that heals. Reading is not practicing what we know. We must take the spiritual truths and rules for practice that we glean from our study and strive to apply them in our daily lives and prayers.

This is where church plays a critical role. It is here that we learn from others how they have successfully applied their study of Christian Science, and we can receive encouragement from their experiences. Yielding our thought to the spiritual facts we are learning expands our ability to recognize and reverse false concepts that we, or those we are helping, are harboring in thought, and prepares us to replace them with spiritual truths that heal.

Of utmost importance in this pursuit is daily preparation. Just as a defense lawyer would not think of defending a case without preparing in advance for the plaintiff’s arguments and testimony, so, too, do we need to mentally prepare ourselves to meet the material suggestions that would undermine our spiritual peace during the course of the day. If the false suggestion of limited time tempts us to neglect this work, we can consider the fact that it requires less effort to deny entrance to a discordant suggestion than to dislodge and destroy a belief that we’ve allowed into the recesses of our thought.

The heartfelt desire for spiritual growth, expressed in an earnest commitment to practice what we already know, increases our confidence and our dominion over whatever comes our way in daily life. This desire is the best preventative—lifting our thought above the deceptive, false evidence of the material senses. It is where commitment really counts. Paul said, “Now therefore perform the doing of it; that as there was a readiness to will, so there may be a performance also out of that which ye have” (II Corinthians 8:11).