Several years ago, I woke in the middle of the night with abdominal pain. It wasn't particularly severe. Still, I did pray to recognize my God-given freedom from pain and soon fell back to sleep. After a similar experience the next night, though, I began to be afraid and called a Christian Science practitioner for treatment. Almost every night for the next month, I was wakened by extreme pain. I requested and received treatment from different Christian Science practitioners at different times. And I was able to complete most of my duties during this period.
At one point, though, I decided to take a day off from my job to devote some time specifically to deep prayer and study, and to reading extensively in Science and Health. While I was pondering a passage I had read, it came to me so clearly that I considered myself difficult to love. What a shock it was to see that I actually believed this!
As I was speaking with the practitioner later on, sharing this insight, this dear one insisted that I call during the night if the pain occurred again. Up to that point I had been reluctant to do this because I believed my problem just wasn't important enough to wake someone else up.
