Article June 23, 2003 ISSUE

REALIZATIONS that brought freedom and healing

By Kenneth Girard

IN THE SPRING OF 2001, I noticed a growth developing on the interior of one of my eyelids. It was somewhat alarming, and I turned to prayer, which was my normal inclination since I've been studying Science and Health. And I prayed with the ideas I read. I realized that I needed to get a deeper sense of God and His care and love for me, and for all of His children. But the growth continued to expand, and I realized that I needed to get the help of a good friend who is a Christian Science practitioner—that's someone who prays for healing. And so this friend prayed with me.

One of the fears that I needed to pray about was that my paternal grandmother had had a similar condition, diagnosed as cancer in both of her eyelids. So I had to think about hereditary disease. There's a wonderful statement in Science and Health that says, "Heredity is a prolific subject for mortal belief to pin theories upon; but if we learn that nothing is real but the right, we shall have no dangerous inheritances, and fleshly ills will disappear" (p. 228). I asked, Did heredity have a hold on me, and was I going to be affected by it?