Testimony of Healing June 21, 2010 Issue

RUNNING WITH FREEDOM

CAROLE TROTTER AMES

In the early 1990s, when I was serving as First Reader of a Christian Science branch church, I felt filled with ideas about God and my relationship to Him much of the time. I also enjoyed running regularly.

One day, I set out on a run at our weekend place in a rural community. I love to run as it gives me quiet time to pray and "defend" myself "daily against aggressive mental suggestion," as students of Christian Science are instructed to do in Mary Baker Eddy's Church Manual (p. 42).

I wasn't far from the house when I had to step off the road into a grassy ditch to give the right-of-way to a large tractor pulling a hay baler. As I stepped back on the road, I caught the toe of my shoe on the edge of the pavement and fell, striking my knee on the lip of the asphalt. I felt the kneecap move sideways and then go back into place. The pain was excruciating. I lay in the grass for at least five minutes. During this time, I was mentally confronting the pain, affirming that I could not be the victim of an accident, or a misstep, and couldn't have fallen out of God's care. I remembered that we're promised in the Bible: "For thou hast delivered my soul from death: wilt not thou deliver my feet from falling, that I may walk before God in the light of the living?" (Ps. 56:13).

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