Last September, I spent an hour practicing my tennis serve from each of the four corners of the court. A couple of days later I began having difficulty lifting my left arm. By the weekend, the pain was so intense that it was impossible to go about my normal activities, and the arm was practically useless. 

My initial thought was to contact a Christian Science practitioner to pray for me, but I decided to first pray for myself as I had learned in Christian Science. Although in relentless pain, I listened to some Christian Science lectures that my daughter had on her iPod. One of them was particularly helpful and encouraged me to fill my thinking with spiritual truths about God and the perfection of His creation. I also read from some of the books in the collection Prose Works by Mary Baker Eddy. This helped me understand that pain is not created by God, the one and only creator, but is instead a mesmeric lie having no basis in reality, which is, like God, wholly good. 

I affirmed in prayer that I am the son of divine Spirit, God, and therefore am not material at all. I knew that in God’s kingdom, perfect health is decreed by divine law and that this fact ruled out any possibility that I could suffer from using my arm.