Last December, a week before Christmas, the area I live in experienced high winds. One evening, returning home in the early darkness, I tripped on a large fallen palm frond that was protruding over the sidewalk. It caught my right foot, and I was thrown onto the cold cement, facedown. The blow to my face and head knocked me unconscious. When I regained consciousness, I was stunned and disoriented. And as I tried to get up, I couldn't move.

At once, the angel thought came to me, "You are God's perfect, spiritual idea, and ideas cannot fall out of God's care." As a lifelong student of Christian Science, I was used to relying on prayer in times of trouble. So my prayers were based on the confidence I had in the immediacy of God's powerful love.

After this prayer, I again lost consciousness, and, the next thing I knew, I was standing at my door, key in hand, unlocking it. Since I couldn't recall what had happened between my time on the sidewalk and opening the door, I felt as if I'd been carried and supported by God, who is divine Mind. I crossed the living room and sat down to collect my thoughts and pray. In deep gratitude I began to thank God, realizing what a blessing it was that I'd been able to make it into the house.

As I sat in my living room becoming more aware of my surroundings, I began to pray with the idea that a spiritual idea couldn't be injured or damaged. I was beginning to feel pain in my knee and side. There were also some bruises and cuts on my face, and a couple of ribs felt out of place. I called a Christian Science practitioner to help support my prayers, and spent the rest of the evening studying a favorite poem, Christ and Christmas by Mary Baker Eddy. When I'd attended the Christian Science Sunday School as a teenager, our teacher had asked us to read and study this poem as an assignment, and I'd always loved its powerful and poetic messages. Every Christmas since then, I've made an effort to read the poem from a fresh perspective.

That evening, the last stanza meant a lot to me:

The word fane, which is another term for temple, helped me recall Paul's statement in the Bible, "Know ye not that ye are the temple of God, and that the Spirit of God dwelleth in you?" (I Cor. 3:16). Right then, I prayed to feel the nearness of divine Spirit, comforting me and defining me as entirely spiritual. I also looked back to the poem and reasoned that in God's presence, there could be no "broken wing," or pain, and no displacement. I thought about these spiritual truths for the rest of the evening, and the pain lessened.

When it was time to retire for the evening, I was able to get up. My mental clarity had completely returned, and I felt confident that it would be natural and safe to go to sleep. Although I couldn't put any weight on my left foot, I held on to the furniture as I shuffled into the bedroom. I quickly fell into a sound and restful sleep and didn't wake up until the morning.

After studying the Christian Science Bible Lesson that morning, I turned to one of Mary Baker Eddy's shorter writings, No and Yes. A section my mother had pointed out to me when I was a teenager stood out: "Jesus came announcing Truth, and saying not only 'the kingdom of God is at hand,' but 'the kingdom of God is within you.' ... Jesus' true and conscious being never left heaven for earth. ... The real Christ was unconscious of matter, of sin, disease, and death, and was conscious only of God, of good, of eternal Life, and harmony" (No and Yes, pp. 35-36). I reasoned that since I expressed, to a degree, this same Christly nature, my spiritual selfhood was intact and couldn't be injured or come into conflict with anything in God's kingdom.

That day, buoyed by these prayers, I was able to move around with the assistance of a cane. I had a church meeting to attend in the evening, and a fellow church member came to pick me up in his car. He offered me his arm to lean on, and I felt the strong assurance of balance and strength, qualities that came from God. I also felt spiritually supported by the prayers of my church friends, and was able to walk.

The next day I attended our Wednesday evening testimony meeting, and in a few days, any bruises and cuts on my face healed and left no scars. I felt an adjustment take place in my ribcage area, and I was beginning to walk normally again.

I still had some discomfort in my knee and had trouble going up and down stairs, so I persisted with my prayers. Over the next couple of weeks, as I continued to become more conscious of my true spiritual selfhood, I realized that in my eagerness to move normally, I'd been simply trying to see injured matter become "normal" matter. Then, I took a radical stand in prayer to see the allness of Spirit and the powerlessness of matter to control my life. As I did so, I found that I could go up and down stairs and the discomfort in my knee dissolved. My normal mobility returned, and the healing has been complete and permanent.

This was powerful proof of the presence of the Christ during the holidays and always.

ELIZABETH K. BRISCOE
PASADENA, CALIFORNIA, US