Testimony of Healing July 18, 1977 Issue

For some years now I have wanted to write of a wonderful healing...

Leslie B. Nelson with contributions from Linda A. Nelson

For some years now I have wanted to write of a wonderful healing that my wife and I experienced with our first child. About six weeks after our daughter was born, the doctor in attendance informed my wife that the child had one leg about an inch shorter than the other. He recommended that a steel brace be immediately applied. But he did not believe there was a possibility that the leg would ever be normal, and he said she would probably always walk with a limp. My wife and I were students of Christian Science, and we had a sincere desire to rely entirely on God for the healing. Not only would a brace be physically difficult for the child, but we felt the healing would come without it, as we turned entirely to God.

We asked a Christian Science practitioner to prayerfully support our own prayer for our daughter. We worked together to see the perfection of the child as the true spiritual likeness of God. We reasoned that this likeness could include no imperfection of any kind.

Two years went by but the healing did not come. My wife and I persisted in daily prayer for our daughter as taught in Christian Science. Over this time, doubt and discouragement had to be met. When the child was old enough to walk, she did so with a decided limp. We wondered at times if we had done right by her as the material evidence of a handicap did not change. Also we indulged in harsh and useless condemnation of ourselves for not making this demonstration. We wondered why a healing had not appeared, since we were conscientious Christian Scientists working as we had been taught to apply the spiritual laws of healing as set forth in Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures by Mary Baker Eddy.

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