Several years ago, I woke up one morning with excruciating pain around my hip area. Within minutes, I was completely paralyzed from the waist down. A Christian Science practitioner was called to pray for me. I soon began losing consciousness and, as my husband was very new to Christian Science and was fearful that I might be passing on, the decision was made to take me to a hospital emergency room. I was admitted, but the next six days revealed very little. Test after test told the doctors nothing.
On the sixth day, one doctor told me he thought it might be a rare incurable disease, and he gave me a 30 percent chance of ever walking again. He said there was nothing more they could do for me, so I was transferred to a rehabilitation hospital, where I was simply offered help in learning how to function with my new disability. I was given no medication or medical treatment.
My new situation was at first very overwhelming and frightening to me. But as I settled into my private room, I started to focus on prayer and seeing myself only as God sees me. I read the healings in the last chapter of the textbook, Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures by Mary Baker Eddy. Many of those accounts tell of people being healed through Christian Science after material medicine left them no hope of recovery.
I took a deeper dive into this book, even though it had already been my constant companion for many years. I also found Christian Science lectures and talks to listen to online. And I studied the weekly Bible Lessons from the Christian Science Quarterly, and immersed myself in the articles and testimonies on JSH-Online.com.
I did my best to adhere to one of my favorite admonitions from Mrs. Eddy: “Beloved Christian Scientists, keep your minds so filled with Truth and Love, that sin, disease, and death cannot enter them. It is plain that nothing can be added to the mind already full. There is no door through which evil can enter, and no space for evil to fill in a mind filled with goodness. Good thoughts are an impervious armor; clad therewith you are completely shielded from the attacks of error of every sort. And not only yourselves are safe, but all whom your thoughts rest upon are thereby benefited” (The First Church of Christ, Scientist, and Miscellany, p. 210).
I simply prayed “without ceasing” (I Thessalonians 5:17).
From my study of Christian Science, I understand that thought alone governs the body. I have also learned that as a perfect child of God, created in His image and likeness, I am spiritual and never subject to a material law of illness.
Over the next three weeks, therapists and nurses asked me questions about myself and my beliefs, which led to opportunities to share Christian Science. One evening the director of the hospital came by and said they were concerned that I was “too happy, too positive, too upbeat.” He said they feared I was in denial about the severity of my case.
That’s exactly what I was doing, from a spiritual standpoint: I was refuting whatever would contradict the reality of God, infinite good. So I replied, “Yes, I am!” I explained that I was 100 percent in denial about what the medical diagnosis had concluded was wrong with me and 100 percent focused on healing. The director advised me not to get my hopes up because I would probably never walk again. But I was choosing not to believe that, and lovingly reminded him of that. Subsequently, he stopped by for several more conversations that seemed to intrigue him.
My beloved Christian Science practitioner stayed right with me in prayer during this entire time, never letting me waver from the conviction that I was already whole, right then and there. For the first week, I was bound to a wheelchair. By the second week, I could walk short distances with a walker. By the third week, I was getting around fairly well with the walker.
I noticed a marked change in the way the hospital director interacted with me. He came by almost every day, curious to know how and what I was thinking about my recovery. He had a growing appreciation for my expectant outlook instead of questioning it.
My husband and I had booked a trip we very much wanted to go on. It was to depart at the beginning of the fourth week of my stay in the rehabilitation hospital. While the prognosis was that we would need to cancel that trip, we didn’t, and remained confident that we would be able to check out at the end of the third week. We went on the trip and had a wonderful time! I got around quite well with a walker and wasn’t prevented from doing anything we wanted to do.
After our travels, I returned to work, using a walker with wheels. After a couple of weeks, one day I was told there was an urgent need for me in another part of the building. I immediately stood up and walked a great distance to where I was needed. I completely forgot to take the walker! And I have never used it since. I am walking freely and have never had a hint of this problem return.
My deep and abiding gratitude for this beautiful way of life knows no limits. Christian Science is demonstrable, and I am so thankful to be a student of it.
Brooke Robbins
St. Louis, Missouri, US
I am Brooke Robbins’s husband. Everything happened just as she has stated. This experience gave me the desire to study Christian Science with more dedication—which I did. I also joined both The Mother Church and a branch Church of Christ, Scientist.
As a result of these steps, I experienced two significant healings that can be attributed to nothing but prayer. I had been diagnosed in 2011 with macular degeneration, a progressive eye condition for which there is no medical cure. I had accepted this diagnosis as permanent. I don’t know that I had ever specifically prayed about it, but after my study of Christian Science became more in earnest, I was healed. Subsequent eye exams in 2020 and 2021 confirmed there was no evidence of the eye condition.
About a year ago, as I was mowing the lawn, I was hit in the leg by something flying off the lawn mower. As days went by, I noticed that the spot on my leg where I had been hit was swelling and becoming very painful. I asked my wife to pray with me about it, which she did. The next day, when I was in the hot tub, I noticed and pulled out a small chunk of wood protruding from my leg, where it had been embedded. Immediately, there was no more pain nor signs of infection, including swelling. It was clear that prayer had accomplished the healing.
I’m extremely grateful for Christian Science.
Gary Allen
