THE CALL THAT OPENED HER MIND TO HEALING
(From Dr. Colemon’s book, ‘Open Your Mind And Be Healed’)
In the early 1950’s, Johnnie Colemon was diagnosed with an incurable disease and began her journey to be healed. Her story began with a telephone call. “My phone was ringing at eight o’clock in the morning and I answered the phone and the voice on the other end of the line said, ‘I’m looking for Johnnie Haley.’ I said, ‘speaking.’ And, the person said, ‘Medical science says that you have six months to live – you have an incurable disease.’ I said, ‘What!’ I hung up the phone and sat there for a moment with tears streaming down my cheeks, and then I stood up to go back to my bedroom. As I passed the cocktail table a magazine fell to the floor. I picked the magazine up, I held it up and line jumped off the page. The line said, ‘God is your health, you can’t be sick.’ Now, I’m standing in the middle of the floor arguing with a magazine because how can you tell me I can’t be sick and the man just told me I’m going to die in six months – something is wrong!
My mother came out and asked, ‘What is wrong with you?’ I told her and then asked her, ‘Who wrote this?’ And she told me, ‘I’ve been putting this material and literature all over this house for years and you won’t touch it; and I see you standing here with it.’ Her Mother continued, ‘If you want to know anything about Unity School or Practical Christianity, you get on the train and you go there and you ask them.’ I said, ‘Fine, I’ll go and ask them.’ I got on the train and went to Kansas City and at that time, Unity Farm (now called Unity Village) was located in Lee’s Summit, Missouri. When I walked through the gates, something hit me as I walked through and I begin to feel a way that I had never felt in my life. The place was so beautiful. The hedges, the flowers were perfect and the little squirrels were sitting up on their little back legs saying hello. It was the greatest place I had ever seen.”
While standing in awe, one of the Unity teachers walked up to JC and began a conversation with the young Johnnie Haley. JC told the Teacher that she had only a few months to live and the teacher said, “You don’t have to die.” JC told the teacher, “I really don’t want to die because I have not yet learned how to live. And the teacher said, ‘We will teach you how to live as long as you want to live.’ I said, ‘this is the place for me, sign me up.” JC rushed back home to gather her belongings to prepare for the summer-long sessions at Unity, which lasted four years; making her the first African-American students to live at Unity Village. “I can’t tell you when I was healed,” JC offered, “All I know is that the healing took place. My body became whole.”
"God is your health, you can’t be sick."