How I Healed Sudden Numbness with Prayer

Peter Conlan — Unsplash

The what-ifs.

I felt a weird tingling on one side of my lip — pins and needles. Then in my fingers on that same side. I didn’t think too much of it, until it didn’t go away.

That’s when the what-ifs began. What if I’m having a panic attack? What if I’m hyperventilating? What if this is a stroke? What if this is a heart attack? What if this is anxiety catching up with me?

Since I always turn to God as a first resort, I began to pray. This meant I had to clobber all those what-ifs with the reassuring truth of what is. With what is spiritually true. With what God — the One Mind, the One Spirit, the One Cause, the Only Power — knows about me, right here and now and always.

What is: the spiritual reality.

My prayers went something like this:

I am not a mortal, physical being. I am therefore not subject to human beliefs about diseases and ailments. I am not in danger. I am safe in God’s care. I am not material. I am wholly spiritual. The Almighty God is my very essence. As God’s image and likeness I can reflect only balance and wholeness, not upset or angst.

I was still afraid, so I prayed repeatedly with Mary Baker Eddy’s “Scientific Statement of Being,” which I put into my own words:

There is no life in matter. All is Infinite Mind and Its infinite manifestation — for God is All in all. Matter is mortal error. Spirit is the real and eternal. Spirit is God. And man is God’s image and likeness. Therefore, man is not material. I am spiritual.

I breathed deeply, deep meditative breathing.

Every breath I breathe belongs to God. God is Spirit. I am spiritual. My breath is God’s being. There’s no anxiety in that.

I walked around the house, declaring my freedom aloud. I kept reassuring myself.

I refused to worry.

I kept reminding myself — re-Mind-ing myself — that if I wasted my time clouded by worry, then I wouldn’t be able to focus on the spiritual reality. I wouldn’t be able to hear God’s guidance.

Worrying for me creates an avalanche, where every worry is connected to another, until all too…