Shortly after I was married, I talked to a doctor about a problem that I had been trying to ignore. For several years I had suffered from pain down the back of my legs that was especially bad at night. He diagnosed it as sciatica and told me I could have an operation, but he advised against it. He said it would be best if I could learn to live with the pain.

The diagnosis scared me. I certainly didn’t want to live with the pain! I was a relatively new student of Christian Science, and the next day I decided it was time to get serious about addressing this problem through Christian Science. I called a Christian Science practitioner for prayerful treatment.

The practitioner helped me see that what the material senses were reporting—or even what the doctor had diagnosed—was not the reality of my being. She wasn’t saying that I had been misdiagnosed, but rather reminding me that God, divine Mind and Spirit, created me, so I was actually much more than a flawed mortal. As the spiritual idea of Mind, I could not become damaged, painful, or diseased.