One healing for which I give particular thanks involved stiffness and swelling in my knees. This caused me a great deal of fear, and for a week or so I couldn't walk farther than half a block without needing to sit down.

At the time, I was dealing with certain upsets and resentments which I knew needed healing. A Christian Science practitioner I spoke with suggested I study references to the words flexibility and spontaneity in Mrs. Eddy's works. As I did, I began to notice gentleness and forgiveness replacing anger and turmoil in my thoughts. Still, much spiritual growth was needed.

I went on a southern holiday and was not able to walk the beach. So I persisted in learning of my spiritual perfection as God's image. I never spoke of this situation, as it gave me so much fear. At times I worried that I wouldn't be able to walk or climb stairs at all, and wondered how I would bring up my two young daughters.

As a result of helping a family member who was ill at the time, I found myself expressing more gentleness, desire to forgive, and willingness to make extra efforts for others. I cherished Mrs. Eddy's words from Science and Health "Like the great Exemplar, the healer should speak to disease as one having authority over it, leaving Soul to master the false evidences of the corporeal senses and to assert its claims over mortality and disease" (p. 395). I also held to the statement "The divine understanding reigns, is all, and there is no other consciousness" (p. 536). I continued to grow in my spiritual understanding and ability to express love, and very gradually all the stiffness and disability faded away. Today I run, windsurf, and ski in total freedom.

When my daughters were sixteen and nineteen, I discovered I was expecting our third child. From the first moment I turned to God to refute commonly held beliefs that age is a problem in later pregnancies. Remarks were made by acquaintances, and also by the doctor, about the risk of complications from being pregnant at this time in my life. Each time a suggestion came that tempted me to feel fearful or upset, I would turn to God. If necessary, I would talk to the practitioner as well, until I felt assured that God is All. Throughout the months that followed, I had no fears.

When the baby was due, the doctor said he wanted to induce the birth if it did not commence naturally within a week. I called the practitioner, and we rejoiced that God was right then in control of all creation. A few days later the birth began, but one nurse at the hospital remarked that it had been so long since I had had a baby that it would probably be a number of hours before the actual delivery. I called the practitioner right from the birthing room and was reassured that all was indeed in God's harmonious care. In less than two hours our perfect little son arrived with no anesthesia or medical intervention. This was ten o'clock at night, and my husband and I took him home at nine the next morning.

Our son is eight now, and has had quick healings of fever, colds, and impetigo, which was diagnosed by a doctor. This last healing occurred when he was still a baby; the condition had spread for about four days, and a neighbor who noticed the condition had told me to buy a certain medicine. That day at the drugstore I saw the particular ointment on a shelf with many other skin products. Immediately I knew that I had absolutely no faith in matter curing matter, because I knew man's spiritual perfection as God's child is the only law. The next morning the baby's skin was clear and smooth.

My gratitude for Christian Science grows daily, as I pray and study and grow in its practise.

Linda B. Wilson
Toronto, Ontario, Canada