For some years I suffered from a spinal curvature, which often caused fatiguing pain but which never completely incapacitated me. After the birth of our third child, however, I twisted the spine and suffered a physical collapse. The kindly physician who was called assured me that I would again be a useful member of society, but that I would have to take treatments the rest of my life and carefully watch every move I made.
One Saturday afternoon I had to be helped into bed because of an attack of the spinal condition, but we did not call the doctor. The next morning my husband, though not a student of Christian Science, said that he thought if he could get me to a Christian Science church service I would be helped, as we had both seen proofs of the efficacy of Science on previous occasions. He and our young daughter dressed me, supported my body, and took me to church.
I knew very little of what was going on, and only phrases of what was read from the desk pierced the darkness of my pain, but these phrases kept repeating themselves over and over. Finally, at the end of the service, as I became dimly aware that the people were rising and leaving the auditorium, these phrases filled my consciousness with a swift and wonderful illumination, and I was instantaneously and permanently healed. Completely free, I walked home, almost unaware of what f was doing.
