My mom was a healer.  As an adventuresome boy, I gave her many opportunities to pull off some doozies when I was a kid.  For her, healing was not a miracle – it was just the natural order.  That understanding was one of the reasons why she was so good at it.

One fall afternoon this 11-year-old boy was out playing flag football.  Now in flag football each player wears two foot long pieces of cloth or rag stuck in his belt on either side of his waist.  A “tackle” occurs when you’re running with the ball and a player on the opposition simply pulls the “flag” out of your belt.  A lot less injuries that way.  Or so they hope.

So here I was running pell mell around right end heading for a touchdown.  An older boy, faster than me, not only caught up to me but somehow decided at the last second to tackle me, rather than simply pull my flag.  Off balance, I wasn’t expecting the tackle and fell forward awkwardly holding the football out in front of me rather than tucking it in to prevent a fumble.

When I fell, I fell chest first on to the top of the ball and the force of my unexpected fall and the weird positioning of my hands on the ball knocked both of my thumbs out of joint.

Ouch!

When I got up from the ground in extreme pain and looked down at my shaking and already swelling hands, the base of each thumb was about an inch closer to my wrist and both hands were extremely disfigured and terrifying to look at.  The skin was not broken but there were two large lumps where there shouldn’t have been any, and each of my thumbs basically pointed in the wrong direction.

As any tough 11 year old would do in that situation, I began to scream and cry with fear, pain and sudden shock.  As the other kids swiftly gathered around to witness the spectacle, the neighborhood bully, Ronnie Throckmorton, stepped boldly forward.  “Ahhh, yer thumbs are jus’ outta joint.  Here!”  And with that, he grabbed my left thumb and wrist with both his hands and gave my damaged thumb a yank and popped it back into its rightful place.

The pain of that second displacement (or rather placement) shot up my arm like a thunderbolt.  I screamed in shock at this second affront to my person within a matter of terrifying moments and, crying and screaming, took off running for home.

By the time I got home, both hands had swelled beyond recognition.  I’m sure my mom heard me coming down the block and was already prepared for the worst.  Actually, she was simply prepared.

When I came in the door she took one look at my hands, one with the thumb still out of joint and the other now twice as swollen having gone through two traumas, and then she took over as only a Mom would do.

“Go upstairs, get in bed and go to sleep.  Do not look at your hands again, Peter.  Put them behind your back and keep them there” she ordered.  Still whimpering in pain, shock and confusion, I complied totally with her wishes.  Perhaps not totally.  Of course, I had to take one more look.  I shouldn’t have, for the picture was not promising.  Both hands were swollen beyond recognition and already the black and blue had started.  It was the last time I looked.

Probably in shock, I finally did as I was told.  I went to bed and thankfully went immediately to sleep.  I remember nothing of the night.  I only remember waking up the next morning with no pain.  Remembering Mom’s orders, but being a boy, I stole a look anyway at… my perfect hands – both thumbs now in place, no swelling, no discoloration, no nothing, except my hands as I knew them – two perfect hands.

While I slept, Mom had gone to work.  By ordering me to put my hands behind me and keep them there, she had taken steps to dispel my fears. “Get thee behind me, Satan.”  Then she corrected her own thought to see only the perfect child of God that she knew and loved – the perfect child with the perfect hands.  She did essentially what Jesus did when he healed the man with the withered hand.  Jesus saw the perfect hand and saw it so clearly and held it in his mind so powerfully that his thought changed the illusion of distortion back into its true and perfect idea.

Mom put God in control of our lives.  She was taught Jesus’ words, “he who believes in Me, the works that I do he will do also; and greater works than these he will do”.  Mom simply believed this and demonstrated this.  She healed as Jesus taught us to do.  She considered this natural, normal, not miraculous, but simply the result of her good thinking, study of the Bible and its higher truths, and the natural application of those truths to everyday life.  Jesus did it.  Why couldn’t she?  And so she did.

I was the recipient of such thinking.  This was not a case where in six weeks or six days or probably even in six hours my hands got better.  This was a case of instantaneous healing.

I imagine that at some time during that night, when Mom got on top of her own fears and was fully able to maintain in her thought my perfect hands, then they were, in that moment, perfect.  Matter did not have to grow or shrink, turn color, or evolve in some way.  Mom’s thought, like Jesus’ thought, was so determined, powerful and clear that her thought, now aligned with the goodness and perfection of God’s perfect idea, simply came under the control of God and nothing else.  At that moment the healing took place.  She did not work to heal my hands; rather she worked to heal the incorrect thought.   At that moment, while the child slept, the perfect image was restored in thought, and so perfect thought dominated reality once more.

There was no recuperation time whatsoever.  I was out playing again that very morning.  The healing was complete and instantaneous.  It was a lesson and a model I shall never forget.  I saw, in this simple mother’s act, the power of God’s law and God’s love in action and manifested in a mother’s love for her boy.

No material remedies were used in this process.  The remedy was prayer and the correction of thought alone.  First fear was dispelled.  Then the incorrect image was replaced in continuity with the correct image.  I went to sleep virtually ignoring the incorrect image and woke up to the correct image.

God and Mom did the rest.