My teenage daughter, Ella, and I had just headed out to go skiing together. But she quickly spotted a friend on the slopes, skied ahead to meet him, and then they were off! I tried to keep up, but she and her friend got on the chairlift ahead of me. My daughter is an accomplished skier and a ski instructor, who had often skied alone on this mountain, so I knew she would be all right.
I skied down the mountain on my own, and then met my wife at the ski lodge. Soon, she got a call on her cellphone. The call was to inform us that our daughter had had a serious accident while skiing, and that we should go to her immediately.
As we rode the chairlift up the mountain to get to our daughter, we discussed some prayerful thoughts that we would hold on to. These were thoughts of our daughter being perfect now, and always, because she is living as the idea of Mind, God, good; and that there were no accidents in God’s perfect realm because God could not know or allow accidents to occur (see Mary Baker Eddy, Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, p. 424). I also thought about how each one of us lives, moves, and has our being in God, and that this means that all the care, comfort, and love that Ella might ever need was already being provided by God.
Yet, what really kept popping into my mind was one simple, powerful thought: “Ella is fine. She is just fine .” This thought was more powerful to me than any other bolt of inspiration, and I simply and intuitively knew with absolute certainty that this was true. She was not, in reality, injured, nor would she need to get better soon—she was fine right then. I conveyed this thought to my wife, even though she is not a Christian Scientist, and she found a great deal of comfort in those words.
When we found Ella, a ski patroller with a first-aid kit was attending to her, along with some friends of ours who had been with us on the mountain that day. They pointed to the highest cliff above, which was over 100 feet tall, where they had seen her fall, landing on her head, then rolling another 60 feet, where the ski patroller said he had finally reached her.
We were transported to a nearby medical center, where the diagnosis was that Ella had a broken neck and back. By now she had gained consciousness, and her mother, brother, and I comforted her as best we could. Another woman, who was in the medical center, said her son had seen Ella fall over the cliff, and that he had been convinced she was dead. These words upset Ella, but I was able to comfort her with my firm spiritual understanding that she was just fine. I whispered to her exactly that: “You are just fine.”
A helicopter was arranged to take Ella to the nearest hospital. I told Ella we were going there to get her checked out so that everyone could be just as convinced as I was that she was fine. Her anxiety, along with the rest of our family’s, and even that of the caring staff around us, subsided. My wife said she believed my prayers were doing some good, and that for this reason I should ride in the helicopter with Ella, which I did.
After we arrived at the hospital, we quickly realized that the attending doctor was having trouble finding something wrong with Ella. He was surprised that he could not feel the crushed vertebrae in her back that a doctor at the medical center had felt and made notes about. In fact, the doctor asked if Ella felt she could sit up, which she immediately did, startling everyone into laughter and joy. The doctor exclaimed, “I didn’t expect that!”
The doctor still wasn’t convinced, however, that Ella’s neck was OK, but an X-ray showed that, indeed, nothing was wrong. About 30 minutes later, we were discharged from the hospital. We were told by the doctors that Ella shouldn’t ski for a month, but she was perfectly able to do so two days later (and would have skied the very next day, but the mountain was closed). The reason Ella skied was to go out on the mountain and watch her brother compete in a skiing competition—and after the competition Ella was given a gift from its organizers. It was a voucher to get her skis waxed. The gift, which was dubbed a “prize,” was presented before hundreds of people from schools all around the north of the country, and it was meant to acknowledge her recovery.
Weeks and months after this incident, people have come up to me and expressed their amazement at Ella’s quick and complete recovery. I am so grateful to have seen the proof of what popped into my thought that day over and over: “Ella is just fine.”
Aukland, New Zealand
A DAUGHTER’S GRATITUDE
I had accidentally skied into an area on the slope where I couldn’t figure out how to go on. There were obstacles in my path and a cliff. This scared me because I’m usually a very confident skier. I was also on my own at this point, as my friend and I had parted ways earlier.
I decided my best option was to try to hike back up the mountain and out of harm’s way. However, I immediately started sliding on the ice and couldn’t stop myself. I remember a feeling of falling for a few seconds and thinking this was not good.
I had no awareness of how much time had passed, but I woke up in the snow with people surrounding me. My first feeling was gratitude—gratitude that I had made it to the bottom of the slope and that I was not alone.
I don’t remember feeling any pain throughout this experience. One of the few times I felt anxiety was when the woman in the medical center said I should be dead. Very upset, I asked my dad why she’d said that, and he simply told me she was wrong and that I was fine.
I was grateful when I was discharged from the hospital. I was happy to leave and to return to my friends and to skiing. I love to share this story with others today because it has such a happy ending.
