NOTHING CAN PREVENT you from expressing God and using the talents He gives to all His children. Not even a diagnosis of ill health. I'm grateful to have learned this through an active life of teaching swimming, dance, gymnastics, and other sports.

As a young child, I'd often been told that I was a "china doll," delicate and a bit frail. I didn't like thinking of myself this way, and had learned in Christian Science Sunday School that I didn't have to accept any limitations on my physical capabilities. I took comfort in Christ Jesus' words, "I can of mine own self do nothing" (John 5:30), which helped me see the need to rely on God. I also often thought about another passage in the Bible that highlighted this idea: "I can do all things through Christ which strengtheneth me" (Phil. 4:13).

I began competitive swimming with the goal of expressing God to the very best of my ability. Even though I was smaller than most of the other swimmers, I knew that as God's reflection, I naturally expressed strength and endurance. When I was a teenager, I was asked to join a highly-ranked swim team. I knew this step would require a lot of practice time and hard work. But I was willing to do it in order to compete at a more advanced level.

During the early weeks of rigorous training on this swim team, the coach sat the whole team down and gave us a lecture on competition. He said we really had to hate our competitors, in order to build up the adrenaline needed to help us win. This advice was startling—and completely contrary to my view of what swimming was really about. To me, swimming was about joyfully expressing spiritual qualities in order to glorify God, not about crushing the competition. Hating my opponents would not help me progress in any way. I shrugged off the coach's comments, thinking that I did not have to accept his advice, and continued with practice as usual.

But soon after the coach's lecture, I began to get sick to my stomach following each race. I attributed this to a buildup of fear and pressure, since a lot was expected of us on this team.

As I had been taught to do as a child growing up in a family that relied on Christian Science, I naturally turned to God for comfort and to better understand my relationship to Him. I affirmed that as God's expression, I was spiritual, not material, and included only pure, good qualities from my divine Parent. My desire to praise God through swimming couldn't be overshadowed by sickness or fear.

Even though I felt as if I was making some progress, my coach noticed my struggle at meets. Out of concern for my well-being, he said that I needed to see a doctor or he wouldn't let me swim. Grateful for the coach's concern, my family took me to a friendly doctor, who examined me, took a blood test, and diagnosed me as anemic. Although he wasn't absolutely sure how to prevent the nausea I'd been experiencing, he told me a specific change in my diet might help. I did modify my diet for a couple of weeks, but still got sick after each race.

At this point, it became even clearer to me that I could only find complete freedom from this persistent trouble through prayer. I stopped focusing on what I ate and turned to God for guidance.

As I humbly prayed for inspiration, it occurred to me that I was only getting sick during competitions; I felt perfectly well during long, and often physically grueling, workouts. Gently and tenderly, I received the God-given inspiration that I should specifically pray about competition. It occurred to me that my picture had appeared in the city papers quite often, and that I should be alert not to develop an inflated ego about people noticing my name and being impressed with my racing times. While I had prayed before to see racing as a way to express God's glory, now I felt the joy that came from affirming that this was my only reason for racing.

I knew that expressing my talent with joy and love was actually being obedient to God's purpose for me. The Bible says, "I have created him for glory" (Isa. 43:7). This refers to us all—we are each created to glorify God by expression His qual ities. God is infinite; therefore, He has infinite capacity and unlimited ways of expressing Himself. Each individual is a unique expression of His wondrous being. This does not involve any competition. No one could take my unique place in God's creation, nor could I take anyone else's place. As Mary Baker Eddy observed, "Each individual must fill his own niche in time and eternity" Retropection and Introspection, p. 70).

My prayers centered on knowing that, as the expression of God, I was completely safe and had nothing to fear, including the doctor's diagnosis. I also began to see that in continually improving how I swam, my real goal was to demonstrate my God-given dominion over physical limitation. In this, I didn't need to worry so much about what my opponents were doing. It was all about expressing the energy and perfection of the Divine. I reasoned that my only motive was to be God's child, and that I could therefore expect to gain victory over the fear that it was inevitable for me to sick during swim meets.

When our family moved to another state, I was tempted to stop competing. But a new friend encouraged me to swim for a local team. And I accepted this as an opportunity to express persistence and gain freedom from these bouts with sickness. As I continued to pray, I felt strongly that I could expect complete healing through a resolution in my thinking.

The same problem with nausea returned during races. But I continued to pray, specifically countering the suggestion that I was swimming for my own glory—winning trophies, publicity, and popularity—with the fact that my only reason for was to glorify God.

On the night before one important race, I recalled the comments my former coach had made, about the need to feel hatred toward one's opponents in order to win. All of a sudden, it became clear to me that although I had not willingly accepted his comments, I had not strongly rejected them, and I had not replaced them with the specific truth that God is Love. I spent the rest of the night just loving my fellow swimmers and knowing that hatred couldn't have any influence or power in my life, because it didn't have its source in God. I found inspiration in this passage from Science and Health: "Clad in the panoply of Love, human hatred cannot reach you" (p. 571). To me, this meant that I was untouched by any suggestion that there was a power opposed to Love.

The next morning, I felt enveloped in a bubble of love. I was so grateful for this breakthrough in my thought. My teammates and I piled into a car for an hour's drive to that crucial meet. As I swam my events, it was as if I were watching myself swim; I could hear my arms hit the water, see my feet kicking, but I seemed to be expending no energy. I won every race I was in that day, and our relay team broke the state record. And I didn't get sick or feel ill. That evening, I raced again with the same results, even eating in between events. That was something I'd never been able to do before. A statement from the Bible, written by the Apostle Paul, came to me: "We are confident, I say, and willing rather to be absent from the body, and to be present with the Lord" (II Cor. 5:8). I realized I had just experienced the impact of that statement.

I never again had those bouts of sickness while swimming competitively, and went on to run swim clubs and teach physical education for a number of years. Prior to the birth of our daughter, I had to have a blood test, which showed no trace of anemia.

The lessons I learned from this experience during my early teen years have been a foundation for me. Friends used to ask me, "Why do you train so hard? Why do you swim up and down a pool for hours on end?" The answer was simply, "Because I love to!" God blesses what we love to do, and gives us the ability we need. And through each activity, we can apply the laws of God and find healing, spiritual growth, inspiration, and joy. css