THROUGHOUT high school, I enjoyed running for the freedom of expression, playfulness, joy, energy, endurance, and camaraderie it brought to my life. Years ago, when I joined my high school track team during my freshman year, it was a very fruitful season filled with joy and friendship, and one where I had the opportunity to run with strength and dominion, qualities I had not previously demonstrated in sports.
During my sophomore year, I looked forward to the spring season so I could participate in track activities again. At some point during this season, however, I became very focused on my body, thinking I needed to lose weight in order to have the perfect figure to stay fit in order to progress with my running. Although I was already at a very normal weight for my shape and size, I began to change my eating habits in an effort to lose weight. I soon adopted a way of thinking that wasn't healthy, and in a short amount of time, I lost a great deal of weight. My mom became very concerned. Close family friends, teachers, and coaches also started to make comments to me and to my family because I didn't look well being so thin. During track meets, I was at a plateau with my performances and performing adequately, but not really progressing.
My mom had many conversations with me where she tried to show me that I didn't want to adopt this way of thinking and living. These conversations went on for a while, but nothing seemed to change my mind. Later on in my junior year, all conversations had ceased. But my mom, a Christian Scientist, who had been praying for me all along, continued with her prayer. I know now that she was praying deeply with a concept about the mirror of divine Science. In Science and Health, Mary Baker Eddy writes: "Your mirrored reflection is your own image or likeness. If you lift a weight, your reflection does this also. If you speak, the lips of this likeness move in accord with yours. Now compare man before the mirror to his divine Principle, God. Call the mirror divine Science, and call man the reflection. Then note how true, according to Christian Science, is the reflection to its original. As the reflection of yourself appears in the mirror, so you, being spiritual, are the reflection of God. The substance, Life, intelligence, Truth, and Love, which constitute Deity, are reflected by His creation; and when we subordinate the false testimony of the corporeal senses to the facts of Science, we shall see this true likeness and reflection everywhere" (pp. 515–516).
