In 1907 I seemed likely to become a hopeless cripple from sciatica and neuritis in their severest forms, but Christian Science healed me. All my life I had been extremely delicate, never able to do things other children did without some suffering. At the age of eleven I had what is called double curvature of the spine and was under medical treatment for four years. Then followed ailments of all kinds; I was never absolutely well. The next serious illness was appendicitis, for which I was operated on, and that was followed by the ailments already mentioned, which at the end of three years left me practically crippled, with hardly any chance of recovery. There was one extremely painful operation which I tried as a last recourse.
I had just undergone this operation and was very ill indeed, when a friend who had recently been healed in Christian Science came to tell me about it. All she said was, "God does not want you to suffer." She could not have said anything that would have appealed to me more. As material pleasures seemed slipping away from me one by one, I clung more and more to God, and my one desire was to do His will at any cost to myself. I would have continued to suffer, had it been necessary, rather than gain my freedom through means that were not of God.
I could take no definite steps toward having Christian Science treatment then, as I was surrounded by doctors and nurses and was not well enough to study. I knew, however, that if it was God's will that I should not suffer, nothing could make me, so I just prayed daily to be led. Six weeks afterward, when I went away for a change and to try to take up my normal life, I became worse than I had ever been. All the ailments reappeared in their severest forms, and my eyesight failed for a time from a bad structural defect of the eye for which I was expected to have to wear glasses always. One night when the pain was unbearable from an attack of sciatica, and I felt unable to battle any longer under conditions too strong for me, a sudden light seemed to come to my consciousness, and I knew that Christian Science was God's way and I could be healed by it. From that moment the pain left me and I could walk. For weeks after such an attack, as a rule I was unable to move my limbs.
