Bowed legs straightened

Betty Jane Bissell with contributions from Shirley Decker

My grandson Brandon was unusually large when he was born, and when he began to walk his legs were bowed. His father had also had bowed legs when he was a baby, and had worn leg braces night and day to correct the problem. There was talk in the family that Brandon would probably need braces, too.

I encouraged my daughter to rely on spiritual healing. And I referred her to this passage from Science and Health: "Inasmuch as God is good and the fount of all being, He does not produce moral or physical deformity; therefore such deformity is not real, but is illusion, the mirage of error"(pp. 243-244).

We lived on opposite coasts, and so I didn't see my daughter or her family for several months. But every time I thought of my grandson, I reminded myself that "All is infinite Mind and its infinite manifestation, for God is All-in-all"(Science and Health, p. 468).

I also recalled an incident that occurred when my son was a boy. One night when he was in bed, he called to me in a very fearful voice. When I went into his room, which was dark, he asked me to look over by the window.

"There's an animal over there looking at me. See his eyes? He must have come in through the window!" he said.

We both thanked God for His perfect creation.

I looked over and, sure enough, I saw two eyes looking at me. Then I turned on the light and saw his toy airplane. The reflection of the street-light on the plane's two engines had looked just like a pair of eyes. We both laughed at how we'd been fooled, and my son settled down again, calm and happy.

This was a wonderful lesson to me about how we can be temporarily fooled by the way things look. The airplane had never been an animal, even though, in the dark, it had looked like one.

Now, with my grandson's problem on my mind, I remembered this example of how appearances can be misleading and how gaining an enlightened and more spiritual view of God and His creation had been our real need.

When my daughter came out to visit in the summer, we decided to go to the beach. As Brandon walked down the sidewalk in front of us, I looked at him and saw that his legs were perfectly straight.

"Look at his legs! They're straight," I exclaimed to my daughter. Then I asked her when this healing had taken place. "I honestly don't know," she said. Somewhere along the line, it just left her mind, and she hadn't noticed.

We both thanked God for His perfect creation and for Christian Science, which enables us to see the practical effect of understanding His perfect spiritual laws.

How wonderful to know that when we start with God's perfection, we don't have to change anything. I am grateful that Jesus' teachings are the foundation of my faith—and proof that God is all good.

Betty Jane Bissell
San Clemente, California

I am the paternal grandmother of Brandon Decker. I am not a Christian Scientist, but I can verify his healing of bowed legs. His father had had bowed legs as a baby and toddler and did have to wear braces day and night to correct this problem. This treatment was partially successful. I believed, therefore, that my grandson would have to do the same. I was happy when I saw him the following summer and realized that he had been healed, evidently through the prayers of his other grandmother and my daughter-in-law Janna Decker.

Shirley Decker
Laguna Woods, California

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Testimony of Healing

Always close to God

October 29, 2001

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