When I was a young husband and dad, I began to experience abdominal trouble. The symptoms became more alarming over the course of a year, and I became more and more fearful. I had no health insurance, no life insurance, and our family was dependent on my week-to-week income as a general contractor.
I had been raised in Christian Science, and from my earliest childhood had consistently experienced proofs of the effectiveness of prayer, including healings of headaches, several sports-related injuries, and a severe nosebleed. Many of these healings came through my own prayers, based on my simple Sunday School understanding of God’s allness and goodness.
However, in this instance the symptoms appeared so serious and painful that I thought maybe this problem was bigger than my understanding of Christian Science could handle. At the time I was working for a company that was hired to manage the renovation of a doctor’s office. I knew the doctor personally because we had built a custom home for him a few years earlier. He was an abdominal specialist, and I thought it made sense to ask him to examine me and make a medical diagnosis so I’d know what I was dealing with.
