About two years ago, I experienced pain on and off when running. It wasn’t every run, and it would last only for a minute or so at a time, but it was very sudden, sharp, and painful. I did pray about it as I had learned from being a student of Christian Science, but looking back now, I realize that I hadn’t worked very hard.

Not long after I started experiencing these pains, while I was running with a friend, the pain came on suddenly and more severely than ever before. I was forced to stop on the pavement. I tried to brush it off, but my friend told me he’d heard a click coming from my hip. I tried to start running again, but after only a few steps I had to stop and be still. My friend, a trained paramedic, was concerned, so he began asking me all sorts of questions. I tried to allay both his and my fear that I wouldn’t be able to manage getting back to my car. But then, just as suddenly as it had struck, the pain left. I had full mobility, and we finished our run.

Several weeks later, while I was on another run with this friend, he asked if there was any lingering pain in my leg or hip. There hadn’t been, and I had actually been starting to forget about it when it suddenly happened again on this run. But this time, I was prepared, and like a lightbulb switching on, I realized that this was a common belief, a suggestion showing up as pain; it didn’t have anything to do with my leg or hip—or even me. Merely thinking about the suggestion had caused me to feel sore. I knew right at that moment that the pain wasn’t real, meaning that it didn’t have substance or intelligence. Then the phrase “error of belief” came to me. I thought about those words for a few moments until I felt well again, and we continued our run.