About eight years ago I was in bondage to the appetite for alcohol, which I was said to have inherited. On pondering over my healing recently I can see it might be likened to the case of the man who was "laid daily at the gate of the temple" and asked alms of Peter and John. He thought it was money he needed, but Peter seeing his real need lifted him up, and immediately he received his freedom from the false belief that he could not walk. The verse in the Bible says, "And he leaping up stood, and walked, and entered with them into the temple, walking, and leaping, and praising God." Peter's discernment of the truth about man lifted him and freed him from the bondage he had been in. In my case, I went to a Christian Science practitioner for help on a financial problem, and during this work I gained my freedom from the appetite for alcohol, and at the same time the desire for cigarette smoking left me. This practitioner, seeing my real need, "lifted" me, and I gained my freedom from the false belief and bondage that I had been in. I am grateful for this healing, and also to learn through this experience that what we really need is healing, in some form, of false beliefs. Mrs. Eddy tells us in "Miscellaneous Writings" (p. 37): "Intemperance, impurity, sin of every sort, is destroyed by Truth. The appetite for alcohol yields to Science as directly and surely as do sickness and sin."
I am also grateful for membership in The Mother Church and in one of its branches; for the practitioner who has so lovingly helped me; and for the privilege of teaching in the Sunday school. I am indeed grateful to our Leader for giving us this wonderful truth that lifts us out of bondage into freedom and light.— Tulsa, Oklahoma
