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Handling Relapse Confidently

By Moji Solanke
15 August 2015   |   11:27 pm
The sense of relief and wellbeing following a healing is indescribable. This feeling is especially heartfelt when the healing is of a dreaded disease or a long bout of illness. The world generally, and Africa particularly, heaved a deep, collective sigh of relief, when the potential Ebola pandemic raging since March 2014, was contained, and…
Administrative Manager, Rainbow Specialist Medical Centre; Dosunmu Yemisi (left), Project Coordinator, Diabetes Podiatry Initiative Nigeria and Medical Director of the Centre, Dr. Afoke Isiavwe and Rainbow’s Senior Medical Officer, Dr. Akaeme Gregory at a press conference on the Podiatry and Diabetes Foot Care workshop organised by the Centre in collaboration with the Podiatry Institute USA at the World Diabetes Foundation in Lagos.  		                                                    					             PHOTO: AYODELE ADENIRAN

Administrative Manager, Rainbow Specialist Medical Centre; Dosunmu Yemisi (left), Project Coordinator, Diabetes Podiatry Initiative Nigeria and Medical Director of the Centre, Dr. Afoke Isiavwe and Rainbow’s Senior Medical Officer, Dr. Akaeme Gregory at a press conference on the Podiatry and Diabetes Foot Care workshop organised by the Centre in collaboration with the Podiatry Institute USA at the World Diabetes Foundation in Lagos. PHOTO: AYODELE ADENIRAN

The sense of relief and wellbeing following a healing is indescribable. This feeling is especially heartfelt when the healing is of a dreaded disease or a long bout of illness.

The world generally, and Africa particularly, heaved a deep, collective sigh of relief, when the potential Ebola pandemic raging since March 2014, was contained, and the last country declared Ebola free on May 9, 2015. But when a new case surfaced seven weeks later in Liberia, the sense of despair was almost palpable. Relapse can seem to bring with it, a feeling of hopelessness and doom; but this need not be the case, whether it is a fever, Ebola or the common cold.

Starting from a spiritual basis literally turns situations right side up, replacing a sense of hopelessness with expectation, especially when expectation has its source in God. Rather than assume relapse is indicative of a more virulent form of the illness, spiritually confidently goes forward with the assurance that symptoms do not have the final say, and healing can be permanent, since progress is God’s law. Mary Baker Eddy, whose healing record attracted world attention, with many instantaneous healings, even of terminal disease, writes in her seminal book Science and Health with key to the Scriptures, that relapse can be met courageously and confidently since disease has no intelligence to move itself about or change from one form to another. This radical, spiritual idea, is proving to be practical, hence the individual can meet the adverse circumstance of relapse as its master.

Undoubtedly, the five physical senses constantly lapse and relapse, ebb and flow in the drift of thought between sickness and health, but spirituality is steady, unchanging. Willing disease to disappear, positive thinking and the material paraphernalia presented by mortal thought as essential to health, predispose to relapse; whereas understanding real being as God’s manifestation, brings about permanent healing, since God can neither relapse nor collapse. This truth is practicalised in human affairs by the authority of God’s law.

During the Ebola scare in Nigeria in July 2014, many individuals of faith turned to spirituality for help. This became imperative because there were no drugs available for the Nigerians afflicted. The robust and decisive efforts of the medical and government personnel, as well as the prayers of the faithful were rewarded with the prompt containment of the disease. Globally, the world rose up united, to fight the scourge, with the result that when there was a relapse, an experimental drug had been produced, record time, which so far, has proved 100% effective.

When faced with a relapse, spirituality offers a confident remedy. Acknowledging that only spirituality is permanent, immediately begins to bring the reassurance that disease has no real staying power. This spiritual understanding brings a lessening of fear, and with fear gone, the foundation of disease is sapped. Regardless of the name, nature or stage of a disease, spirituality, based on deep toned faith and a growing understanding of God, handles it with the confident assurance of permanent healing.

m_asolanke@hotmail.com@CSCOM_NigWest

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