A testimony is one way of showing gratitude to God, and I wish to express my gratitude for Christian Science in this way.
Over two years ago, when Christian Science was first brought to me by a dear friend, I had just been through four operations in an attempt to regain my health. All were failures. Added to my already terrible burden was the fact that these operations had left me badly deformed. My neck was drawn stiffly to one side of my shoulder, and to look around I had to turn my whole body. One arm had been left two inches smaller and three inches shorter than the other one, with a deep sunken strip running from armpit to wrist. This condition was never even mentioned to the Christian Science practitioner who was working persistently and conscientiously for me, because other problems seemed more insistent to me. But the crying and grieving spells that I had each time I caught a glimpse of myself left me. And through the practitioner's loving efforts to make me see my real and perfect self, the unhappy picture of my neck and arm dropped completely out of my thoughts. There came a time when I forgot to notice them. When the healing came, I do not know. It may have been the next day after my thoughts cleared; it may have been the next week; it may have been the next month. But a couple of months later, in playing with a bracelet, I noticed that my arm was the same size and the same length as the other one, that my neck was no longer held stiffly to one side, and that I was turning it normally. This one thing I know, not from this instance, but from many others, that when we wipe out the error in thought, forgetting it completely, while studying the perfect God and His perfect man, this perfection will be manifested in us.
I was healed instantly of chronic constipation the moment I realized that Mind controlled the body, and backed up this realization by throwing away my nightly medicines. At one time I was healed of a very bad attack of influenza. A day and a half later I was visiting around, having been healed a few hours after help was asked from a practitioner. I was also healed of grief by the wise and loving words of the practitioner, who showed me that there is no death in Life, and no parting and separation in Spirit.
