A few years ago I went on vacation in Florida, where I basked in...

A few years ago I went on vacation in Florida, where I basked in the warm sunshine. I love swimming, and early every morning I'd take a dip in the pool when nobody was around, so that I could enjoy it all to myself. One morning while I was swimming underwater, I felt a terrible burning sensation on my skin and eyes. When I reached the surface, I realized that the pool attendant had unintentionally poured a bucket of chlorine where I was swimming. He immediately fished me out of the water and pushed me into one of the outside showers adjacent to the pool. After I was rinsed off, he escorted me to my hotel room.

The stinging sensation in my eyes and skin had stopped by the time I got to my room. But after a while I felt feverish, and I realized that I hadn't promptly taken care of the problem through prayer as I should have. I took to my books, the Bible, and Science and Health by Mrs. Eddy, like one grabbing onto a lifeboat in the middle of the ocean. This sentence on page 412 in Science and Health came to mind: "Realize the presence of health and the fact of harmonious being, until the body corresponds with the normal conditions of health and harmony." I stuck with this truth until dawn, but still the fever persisted.

Although the fever had lessened, my fear of being ill the day before I had to fly home was great. So I asked for help from a Christian Science practitioner. She allayed my fear and set me to work on memorizing the first verse of number 412 in the Christian Science Hymnal:

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August 22, 1983
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