Article February 7, 2011 Issue

Prayer on the starting block

By Jenna Mehlenbacher

I am a sophomore in  college and have been swimming competitively for the past eight years. For several years, I was not able to swim the butterfly stroke very long without pain searing through my back. I wasn’t in pain at other times, so I’d told the coaches of my club team that I didn’t want to swim those kinds of races, and they obliged, letting me swim in races of 50 yards or less.

However, I came to realize that I’d let myself believe this was a part of me, that I had a back problem, and there were limits to my capabilities. I wanted to be healed of this limitation. I often thought about the answer to the question “What is man?” on page 475 of Science and Health. From this I learned that God’s qualities are not expressed by matter, and I began to understand that I could express freedom and dominion in all my endeavors, including swimming.

I prayed on and off about this issue during high school, occasionally supported by a Christian Science practitioner, but never really put my full effort behind my prayers. When I came to Principia College last fall, I was determined to meet this challenge spiritually. I had great expectations about what I could do, especially on the swim team.

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