"I TORE MY ACL!"

“The so-called laws of matter and of medical science have never made mortals whole, harmonious, and immortal. Man is harmonious when governed by Soul. Hence the importance of understanding the truth of being, which reveals the laws of spiritual existence.” [1]

It was a beautiful day at Windensea Beach. I had spent the afternoon bodysurfing and noticed that Big Rock – La Jolla’s version of Pipeline was breaking and only one person was surfing it (a rare combination). I ran up the street and borrowed a friend’s surfboard – a shape that is quite a bit different than what I am used to riding. As a wave Big Rock is sexy to look at and difficult to ride. It is fast, hollow, powerful, and breaks over a shallow reef onto an exposed “big” rock. Wave selection is important because if your timing is wrong … you eat it.

My first couple of waves were fun; however I was tired from the earlier “body whomping” session. Not being accustomed to my friend’s full figured board made things a bit more challenging. As I attempted to stand up on a fast breaking wave – where the floor drops out from under you – I was thrown but my feet stuck to the board; the mental image of that moment was as if one were twisting a chicken leg off its body.

I came up to the surface for air with an unbearable sense of pain in my knee. My first thought was, “I tore my ACL!” What? Where did that come from? (I had a similar first thought when I dislocated my shoulder playing football in high school). Immediately, I got to work metaphysically -- knowing that this was nothing but a false physical claim and that Father-Mother-Love was not its author. Within moments the pain and crunching sensation in my knee left as if it had never happened. I continued to surf, catching some more waves. As I came back to the shore, I realized that I had left my swimming fins up the beach at Windensea. So I left the surfboard with my friend who was watching from a bench on the bluff overlooking the beach. I ran a quarter mile, roundtrip, without any symptoms of the accident. Once I reached my friend back at the bench I excitedly rehearsed the event with my knee out in the water and how I treated it.

As soon as I finished describing the event… Guess what happened? Yep, the pain and injury returned. As if flipping a switch, my knee was killing me, making popping/crunching sounds. From that point forward I was gimping around for two weeks asking my self what happened? How could I go from feeling healed, catching waves, and running up and down the beach to incredible pain and physical instability? For two week I hopped on one foot and had to gingerly grab my ankle to lift my leg in and out of bed (or a chair). Without going into more detail, the condition looked and felt very serious.

As the healing felt like it was slow in coming, I reviewed the events of the afternoon at the beach. Was it because my friend was upset with me for spending so much time in the water? Was it because I rehearsed the accident out loud so soon after the “healing?” As I thought harder, it occurred to me that prior to going to the beach that day, I had been reading online an interview with Joe Montana, the hall of fame quarterback. The story went into the detail about Joe’s deteriorated physical condition due to football related injuries. As I was reading, I kept thinking “poor Joe” as the article outlined how he still has to have his surgically repaired knees drained now and then after playing a simple game of basket ball with his boys in the backyard.

With that I realized that I had been accepting the reality that Joe Montana (or anyone else) could suffer from a torn ACL. In sports these days it seems to be a common injury. Well if I believe that this type of injury is real for someone else, then I am leaving the door open for it to be a reality for me. Consequently, I was able to correct the error in my thinking and the physical claim disappeared.

I must admit, it is a wonderful thing to go “back in thought” and correct what appeared to be an innocent, if not unconscious, way of thinking – resulting in an immediate physical healing “in the present.”

I also learned that if we are going to share a healing with someone else, we must protect the healing by actively knowing that the accident was not real, and that in describing it to others we must be clear that they cannot believe that it was real as well.


[1] Science & Health with Key to the Scriptures, by Mary Baker Eddy, page 273:16