When I was a young adult, my family moved house next to a large, undeveloped parcel of land. This beautiful little wilderness was lush with trees and thick underbrush, and I enjoyed hiking through it often.

One day I noticed what looked like insect bites on my ankle. At first I paid no attention to them except to scratch the ankle occasionally. But as the affected area grew, it was evident that I had been exposed to some type of poisonous plant in the woods. The condition continued to worsen, so I contacted a Christian Science practitioner to pray with me about it. Eventually the rash spread to my entire body and was very painful. I could barely move and was confined to bed.

Since my family was unable to care for me, they took me to a nearby Christian Science nursing facility, where I was put into a nice, quiet room. The facility was peaceful and filled with a sense of joy and hope. The Christian Science nurses never once commented on the physical condition. They saw me as God’s perfect, spiritual man. I felt this clarity and joined them in accepting this truth about my real identity as God’s spiritual expression, whole and healthy, and rejected as a lie about me the evidence of harm presented by the physical senses. I also listened to recordings of the weekly Bible Lesson from the Christian Science Quarterly and of Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures by Mary Baker Eddy.