As a child, I attended Christian Science Sunday School with my three sisters. I remember being healed through prayer at an early age.

One time when I was on a swing, my foot hit the pointed top of a picket fence, injuring the foot seriously. Through my mother's prayers, the wound healed quickly and left no scar. When I was in elementary school, I was healed of severe leg pains. I also saw healings that my sisters had through prayer.

As I moved into my high-school years, however, I got caught up in the "rebellious"' 60s. I pursued harmful distractions, chose the wrong friends, and basically lost interest in God. Once I was old enough to make my own decisions about attending church, I just dropped out.

It was many years later that my interest in Christian Science was rekindled. But that seed had already been planted for me to know God as my Father-Mother and the source of my well-being. I had always admired my mother's unswerving faith, and the fact that she apparently never got sick had made a deep impression on me.

The turning point in my life came in a natural and beautiful way. I was under the care of a physician for migraine headaches, and was taking pills daily in the attempt just to keep the pain at bay. I remember thinking that if I'd had a day without any pain, it had been a good day. On top of this, I began having eye trouble. This jolted me, but like walking from a dark corridor into a room ablaze with light, the thought came to me, "I know about Christian Science. I know that God is present in my life, and I want to rely on Him totally for healing." From that day, I immersed myself in the daily study of Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures by Mary Baker Eddy, read the Weekly Christian Science Bible Lesson from the Christian Science Quarterly, and everything else on Christian Science I could get my hands on. I logged on to spirituality. com, and found frequent comfort from the articles I read on that website. As I began to understand that I was God's spiritual creation—already perfect—rather than a physical body made of matter, I stopped taking the medication. I was actually feeling more of my relationship to God.

One line of thought that I pursued, which put me firmly on a spiritual path, was seeing myself as God's reflection. I thought deeply about the elaboration that Science and Health gives on page 518 of the Bible verse: "And God saw every thing that he had made, and, behold, it was very good" (Gen. 1:31). This helped me glimpse that my perfect identity was true now—not something that was going to happen later. It also led me to explore the meaning of the word good. I started with Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, and found the following definitions: "excellent, high quality, genuine, sound and valid, healthy, not spoiled or tainted, free of distress or pain, free from blemish, skillfully and expertly done." WOW! These definitions blew me away. I thought I knew what good meant, but my study was opening up a whole new world of qualities to claim as mine from God.

I also made Science and Health's explanation of generic "man" a constant companion. For each truth expressed about man, I'd substitute the pronoun I—"I am not matter .... I am not made up of brain, blood, bones, and other material elements. ... I am idea, the image, of Love..." (see p. 475).

One day I realized that I was no longer suffering from the headaches. I don't know exactly when that happened, but they completely disappeared—and there has been no return of them. I hadn't even been praying specifically for that healing, but instead to get a better concept of God's nature, and of what that said about me.

I'm still praying about the eye trouble, but there has been significant improvement, and I'm joyfully expectant of a complete healing.

I am so grateful that I have Christian Science back in my life, and that those early childhood healings, instruction in Sunday School, and my mother's example, eventually resurfaced and rescued me, setting in motion a change that has blessed every aspect of my life.

Carol Johnson
Missoula, Montana