Last year I began experiencing pain in my hip. The pain didn’t prevent me from doing my usual activities, so at first I didn’t take it seriously. Then one day I attended a dinner party and heard someone complain of troubles with arthritis, specifically mentioning hip pain. Another person said she’d had the same problem but had undergone hip replacement surgery. Suddenly I thought, “Oh great! Am I experiencing arthritis?” I had not gotten a medical diagnosis, but the symptoms described matched everything I was experiencing.
I began praying the best I could on my own. In due time, however, I found I could not sleep except in one position, and I was unable to rise from bed without great difficulty. I couldn’t even put on my own socks. Clearly, it was time to get help. So I asked a Christian Science practitioner to work and pray with me.
The healing did not come right away. It took daily, patient, persistent prayer to make progress, and it was a struggle with self. As I prayed about the pain and stiffness I was feeling, I gradually began to consider if there were some unyielding attitudes to which I might be holding. Something in particular had happened recently, which had left me feeling I’d been wronged and that I’d been denied something I thought was rightfully mine. This was proving to be a major source of disappointment. And I had to admit that I was harboring unkind thoughts toward those I thought had wronged me, feeling sorry for myself and reacting in negative ways. There was definitely a need to “soften up.”
