In the winter of 2021–2022 my right knee began to hurt more and more with each passing day and became swollen, so that I could bend it only with a great deal of pain.

Feeling I was at the mercy of the situation, I decided to engage a Christian Science practitioner for help through prayer. The first thing the practitioner told me was that we don’t bow down to a false god—a mental suggestion of discord—but rather to what God, divine Love, knows. With this encouragement, I clung to the fact that all feeling and movement emanate from God. It’s not that God moves my limbs or organs or keeps them operating, but that He governs all the functions that characterize me as His beloved spiritual idea. These functions represent qualities such as pliability, suppleness, and stability. I began to understand that pain has nothing to do with me. 

The less I focused on the sense, or suggestion, of a painful and swollen knee, and the more I expanded my view spiritually, the more clearly I recognized that the universe is not fragmented, consisting of either warring individuals or overtaxed and inflamed matter. Rather, it is a complete system of ideas that function in peaceful relation to each other, governed by harmony.