In 2006 I traveled to India with a friend. It was a life-affirming adventure full of meaning, compelling regeneration, and spiritual growth.

We spent several weeks enjoying continuous benevolence wherever we went. However, we both became ill with the same symptoms, under the same circumstance, and had to come home early. My friend, who is not a Christian Scientist, was medically diagnosed by more than one physician as having contracted giardia, a type of intestinal infection. We also both experienced significant weight loss.

My friend underwent a variety of medical treatments over several months, and at one point a specialist told her that it was the severest and most drug-resistant form of the infection they'd seen. Throughout this time, my friend and I spoke often, and she explained that her medical treatments had distressing side effects. I chose to rely completely on the spiritual solution of prayer-based Christian Science treatment. My trust was in the healing and spiritual regeneration exemplified by Christ Jesus' ministry—in the illumination of God's grace to human thought. So it was natural to aks a Christian Science practitioner to pray with me. It was encouraging to have this selfless support.

I knew that by more fully understanding health in terms of spiritual wholeness and holiness, misconceptions about life would drop away, and this would naturally result in healing. The practitioner helped eliminate any resistance in my thought to the harmony of God's kingdom—the spiritual reality of life and the true order of being that are present here and now. I knew that evil and fear were groundless concepts that needed to be cast out, and I prayed to turn my thought to the fact that one can never be alienated from God's love.

The practitioner asked me to read the first 20 pages of the chapter "Genesis" in Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures by Mary Baker Eddy. I'd read these words many times, but they came alive as they stirred and lifted my thinking, breaking through mental suggestions of suffering and conflict. I saw that God, as the universal divine Principle, Love, manifests creation not as matter but as ideas, through divine expression.

The ideas of God's creating, whether seen as objects, animals, people, or even microorganisms, can't be harmful, because all ideas in God's creation are mutually beneficial expressions of the one divine Life. And since matter is actually a distorted, mistaken concept of Life, which is spiritual, health can't be brought down by a material condition. As I prayed with the practitioner for several months, these waking thoughts brought spiritual regeneration and ongoing physical progress.

It was such a relief to see these facts more clearly and to give up thoughts that run counter to a spiritual sense of life. I got a more tangible understanding of God as Love, and of Love's abundant care for all. I felt the power of the following statement from Miscellaneous Writings 1883–1896 by Mary Baker Eddy: "....Love is the Principle of unity, the basis of all right thinking and acting;..." (p. 117).

Over the next few months, the symptoms abated and continued to lessen, and soon the condition vanished altogether. My friend I spoke often throughout this time, and I'm happy to say that she also recovered a couple of weeks later.

I was so grateful to be free of the physical difficulties and to gain back a normal amount of weight. However, in retrospect, the best part of the healing was that, while looking for freedom from pain, I found spiritual awakening that affected other areas of my life as well. The Christ, the active presence of God's love, turned my thought toward freedom and unselfishness even before the physical change took place. I was able to reach out in a tangible, healing way to someone needing help, and was also compelled to love with greater purity in another situation where unkindness seemed to linger.

A friend once shared that healings come in the time and the way that blesses the most. I'm grateful for many healings in Christian Science, including a recent incident in which almost half a thumbnail that had torn off was regrown within three days. I knew that Jesus, Mary Baker Eddy, and countless others have witnessed immediate transformation through divine law, and I was certain that healing comes from waking thought and doesn't require time. Even now, divine grace continues to transform my view of reality, "unit[ing] understanding to eternal harmony" (Science and Health, p. 506). What more, in heaven or on earth, could we ask for.

DEBRA ANN JONES
FLETCHER, NORTH CAROLINA, US