Testimony of Healing September 8, 2003 Issue

Respiratory infection overcome

[Name removed by request]

About five years ago, my idyllic life as a student in Europe suddenly morphed into a nightmare. While on an academic semester abroad in Paris, I came down with a respiratory infection. I couldn't breathe without hesitating and was in pain with each breath.

Unable to sleep for four nights in a row, and troubled with fears, I turned wholeheartedly to God and prayed for healing. My religion also had been my healthcare since childhood.

I realized that it didn't matter how magical or romantic Paris was, the place I truly loved was that closeness to God that my trust in Him had always brought. I prayed with a phrase from a hymn I remembered: "In atmosphere of Love divine, /We live, and move, and breathe" (Christian Science Hymnal, No. 144). I understood that God didn't know me as trapped in a failing human body, trudging through these days, but as His loved child. My life actually was in God—in eternal Life—and only in Him did I actually live and breathe. That first verse of the hymn continues on to say that although our eyes don't always perceive these spiritual facts, it is actually the deception of materiality that is the source of our troubles.

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