In the fall of my sophomore year in high school, I joined the cross-country team. It was a new activity for me, as I had never run before. Along with the challenges of being a first-time runner, I immediately began having problems with my knees. When it became too painful to continue running, I knew that for me it was time to address the situation with prayer.

I asked a Christian Science practitioner to pray with me, and immediately my thoughts about running began to change. She helped me transform my view of running from a mere act of physical toil to an uplifted, spiritual experience. Challenging myself to break through self-imposed physical limits didn't have to be a painful process. In fact, it didn't amount to physical struggle at all. I saw that it was natural for me to express strength, energy, and freedom because they are all qualities of God that I include as His reflection. They're mental qualities, not subject to material conditions. I was beginning to get past thinking of bodily structure strictly in physical terms. For example, I loved reasoning with the idea of legs as representing foundation, and knees as flexibility. I saw that these functions, rooted in spiritual reality, are always under God's control.

One day during practice, my coach pulled me aside and asked to take a look at my running shoes. He discovered that the shoes I'd been sold at the beginning of the season were designed to correct a problem I didn't have when running. Right away, he was able to provide me with a new pair of shoes from a supply he had on hand.

The practitioner and I were confident that this discovery had come about as the result of our prayers. Now we also prayed to acknowledge that no mistake or accident had any power to create discomfort or suffering. I thought about this statement in Science and Health: "Accidents are unknown to God, or immortal Mind, and we must leave the mortal basis of belief and unite with the one Mind, in order to change the notion of chance to the proper sense of God's unerring direction and thus bring out harmony" (p. 424). And thus bring out harmony. It was so reassuring to me to know that I actually couldn't suffer the ill effects of a mistake—something God hadn't caused to happen.

Over the next several weeks, I felt that my spiritual understanding was continuing to grow, but physical freedom wasn't coming as quickly for me. When I was tempted to feel discouraged, the practitioner reassured me that God was taking care of me every moment. I saw signs that this was true. Wasn't His care evident in the inspiration of my coach that day, in the practitioner's steadfast expectation of healing, and in the encouragement from my teammates?

I also prayed with another passage from Science and Health: "Progress takes off human shackles" (p. 256). For me, this meant that "human shackles"—the knee trouble—couldn't bind me, couldn't prevent me from expressing the painless agility and strength God had given me. I became certain that progress in my grasp of these spiritual concepts would move me toward a solution to overcoming this physical challenge. Healing was achievable because it was God's law.

That was a turning point. It wasn't long before I was running with much happiness—but no more knee pain. In fact, I ran with total freedom. As the season came to a close, I was grateful for all that I had gained—a wonderful healing, and especially a newfound inspiration and understanding of the healing power of God's love.

Ashley Korthals
St. Louis, Missouri