Testimony of Healing April 5, 2010 Issue

HEALED OF LEG INJURY AND HEARTBREAK

LESLIE BISHOP

The water was perfect. I'd been waiting all summer to finally have an opportunity to go water-skiing. Then it happened. I was in the water, getting up on one ski, when the boat pulled forward. I heard my leg snap, and felt a wrenching pain. I knew something was definitely wrong, but I was able to crawl into the boat. I didn't want to alarm my two young sons, so we returned to shore and went home. When I entered my mother's house, where we were staying, she saw that I was struggling, and said that she'd take care of the boys while I went to my room to pray. We had a plane to catch in just a few hours, and I was barely moving. You could call it limping at best.

I immediately opened up the Christian Science Bible Lesson. The subject that week was "Soul," and it included the story of Jacob wrestling with an angel, and the passage that mentions "the hollow of Jacob's thigh was out of joint" (Gen. 32:25). I knew that an angel—a message from God—could speak to me and bless me the same way it had blessed Jacob. The angel message that came to me was a quote right out of Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures: "The divine Science of man is woven into one web of consistency without seam or rent" (Mary Baker Eddy, p. 242). I looked up the word seam in the dictionary, and found that the definition includes "a scar" or "crack." Right then, I mentally acknowledged that there never had been and never could be any crack or scar in the perfect and complete man. That was my inescapable identity—created and cared for by God.

Since my husband's passing several years ago, at times the responsibility of taking care of two young, very active, boys has seemed overwhelming. But I've found strength and support in our divine Parent's loving presence, and I knew that would be the case in this situation. It was right for my children and me to fly home that day, and I turned to another passage from Science and Health: "Whatever it is your duty to do, you can do without harm to yourself. If you sprain the muscles or wound the flesh, your remedy is at hand. Mind decides whether or not the flesh shall be discolored, painful, swollen, and inflamed" (p. 385). "Your remedy is at hand"—I loved that thought. I didn't have to go anywhere to find comfort, or just sit around waiting for my leg to get better. The Truth was there, and it was powerful.

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