One summer evening, I was retrieving a toy for one of our children under the deck in our backyard. It was quite dark under the deck, and as I knelt down to search for the toy, I placed both knees on a board that had several rusty nails poking through it. The board stuck to my knees as I stood up. After removing the board, I went into the house and washed the injured knees. I was rushing to get dinner ready for our children, and while my knees hurt I decided I would deal with this injury after the children were in bed.
Once they were in bed, I sat down to read the Bible Lesson in the Christian Science Quarterly for that week. I read many wonderful statements and knew in a somewhat general and abstract way that they applied to my situation, but I did not really pursue how the truth contained in those statements applied to me at that moment. Tired from a busy day, and feeling I had made some effort to help myself, I went to bed. In the middle of the night, however, I woke with such severe pain in both legs that sleep was impossible. It hurt to lift or even move the legs. I felt I needed to call a Christian Science practitioner for help through prayer, which I did. Then I prayed too.
I have always liked working with the "Scientific Translation" of God, man, and idea, which Mrs. Eddy gives on page 115 of Science and Health. As I now pondered man's true nature as God's idea, I saw that in truth my whole being is constituted of what God understands man to be, what He knows of man as His image and likeness, what He knows of His own idea. I also understood God to be good, and I saw that no element unlike good could ever be a part of God or His ideas. Nothing unlike good could ever invade man's true being, because it could never enter God's being, and man is an image held in God, Mind.
