As a long-distance runner in high school, my performance each year seemed to follow the same frustrating pattern. I would begin a season well, but my race results would gradually deteriorate until I finished the season worse than I had started. My coach thought this might be evidence of some kind of deficiency and recommended that I take nutritional supplements. But because I'm used to relying on God for healing, I decided to pray instead. This brought positive results in the form of improved strength and endurance. But the overall pattern of decline throughout the course of each season continued through high school and into college.
Then, during the spring of my junior year in college, I started to feel unusually weak at track team practices. Over the course of a week or two, I found it increasingly difficult to complete routine workouts.
It was time to pray more earnestly. Each day I pondered what I knew was true about God and my relationship to Him. That God is divine Principle—the only Principle that has ever existed, and therefore the only cause for all that exists. That I am God's perfect, infinite, eternal expression of strength, energy, speed, power, and joy. I asked a Christian Science practitioner to pray with me.
