Testimony of Healing February 7, 1994 Issue

During the second half of my junior year in college, a...

Debbie E. Richards

During the second half of my junior year in college, a growth appeared on my foot. At first I ignored it, thinking it would soon go away. But instead it grew larger and became so painful that sometimes I couldn't walk or stand.

I realized that ignoring the problem wasn't going to solve it, so I began to pray. I believed that I could permanently heal my foot only through prayer, and I called a Christian Science practitioner. For almost seven months we prayed together.

Because the healing took much longer than I had expected, I had to overcome frustration and discouragement. The practitioner helped me to understand that discouragement involves lack of attention to the truth. In other words, the more I thought about my foot, the less I thought about spiritual identity. It helped me a great deal to contemplate the spiritual qualities of foundation, balance, and stability. The more I began to see the particular spiritual concepts that feet express—mobility, freedom, progress—the less I thought about the pain and the growth.

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