How I Healed Sudden Numbness with Prayer

6 min readJul 17, 2023

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 soon I’m sitting in a pit of despair.

The word worry comes from the Old High German wurgen, meaning “to strangle,” and the Lithuanian verzti, “to constrict.” Worry strangles us in evil’s chokehold, as it also means “to harass by tearing, biting or snapping,” to repeatedly “touch or disturb,” “attack,” “torment,” or “afflict with mental distress or agitation.” When we agonize over a problem, we are making something out of nothing. When we’re caught up in rumination, we’re putting our trust in deception — completely forgetting the Truth of Being.

And I definitely didn’t want to go down that dark road!

The Bible says, “Don’t be anxious about anything. Take everything to God, and with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known; and the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and minds” (see Philippians 4:6–7).

So, as each what-if came up — worry about a symptom in my body or about my circumstances — I answered every single one with an affirmation about my true spiritual nature, which knows no fear or imbalance. Overwhelm about financial concerns. Apprehension about work. Distress over my obligations, my family members, and so on. To counteract each complaint, I poured out my gratitude for a blessing in my life that specifically refuted it.

My mind is within God’s Mind. God is thinking only good thoughts about me. Inside the One Mind, there can’t be any torment, struggle, lack, or alarm.

The answer to the endless merry-go-round of turning a problem over and over is to jump off. Turn away from the suffering. Release it. Summarily dismiss it.

That wasn’t an easy thing to do. But I persisted. And then a friend called. And I turned my full attention to her. And by the end of the call I was back to normal. The pins and needles were totally gone.

A relapse.

But a couple of days later, the same numbness in my lip and fingers happened again. This time, I was armed and ready with all my prayerful affirmations and expressions of gratitude. Yet the pins and needles persisted a lot longer this time.

Instead of allowing anxiety and alarm to take over, I decided to go on with my life. I took a short drive, praying out loud. Then I took a walk with my husband, graciously receiving his love and care.

The body is in the Mind.

Common thinking says that the mind is in the body (stuck inside a brain). But the reality is, the body is in the mind. My mind is an expression of the One Mind. The Infinite Intelligence that is God emanates only good ideas. A good idea: that’s you and me. No stress. No disease. No anxiety. No emergency. Only Love. Only Good. Only peace, harmony, balance, and wholeness.

So I held on to affirming the spiritual facts, and I kept up the gratitude. That night, the pins and needles persisted but I remained vigilant in prayer. Sometimes my lips would be back to normal. Sometimes my hand or arm would take over. Sometimes my foot. I didn’t give up.

As a full reflection of God’s image and likeness, I am spiritual. I am 100 percent spiritual! This numbness is only a small part of my body. So let’s say it makes me feel like I am ten percent physical — well then, I declare that I am 90 percent healed! And I insist upon the rest! I will not be bullied by lies about me. I am 100 percent spiritual — and I will be 100 percent healed!

When I woke up in the morning, even though some numbness was still there, and sometimes even in my foot, I was determined not to give in to fear and panic.

OK! It’s just five percent of my body that feels wrong. I am 95 percent healed. I am 100 percent spiritual!

I am healed.

I went about my day. I walked it off. I kept praying with any prayer that came to me. I prayed with the Shema. Whatever words I used, I focused on moving toward healing — with this 100-percent spiritual mantra at the forefront of my thought, and my heart filled up with gratitude:

I am 97 percent healed! Hey, now it feels like I’m 98 percent healed! Yes, I am 100 percent spiritual!

By the middle of the day, I noticed that all the pins and needles had left. All was well. I was back to myself.

As Eddy declared: “For right reasoning there should be but one fact before the thought, namely, spiritual existence. In reality there is no other existence” (Science and Health, p. 492).

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This post is the 92nd installment of my Medium series, “Christian Science Redux.” To find out more about spiritual healing and how to be a healing presence for others, read my first book Five Smooth Stones: Our Power to Heal Without Medicine Through the Science of Prayer (which won Finalist, Spirituality category, in the 2010 National Indie Excellence Awards). There are only a few hundred copies left, but you can save money while supporting me, the author, when you order directly from me.

My upcoming second book is tentatively titled Seven Words to Freedom, Eight Days a Week: The Healing Power of Living Prayer — in which I take a deep dive into the original Hebrew of the Shema and demonstrate its power to heal.

Travel around the world and learn about the many wonderful ways humans celebrate — with my “Every Day is a Holiday” series.

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*newstalgia: My word for loving the past with an eye toward a hope-filled future.