Healing of severe leg pain

Claude C. Smith, Jr.

I work for a distributor of ten different daily or weekly newspapers. This work is done inside the distribution facility in a northwest suburb of Chicago. It involves standing almost all the time while I’m working with the newspapers, collating and bagging the sections and getting tables ready for the delivery personnel so they can more speedily leave the building on Sunday morning.

Sessions that start around noon on Friday often last until about noon on Saturday. Except for a few short breaks, I am standing and moving about as I do my work. This is tiring, but caused me no physical trouble until about six months ago.

One day my right leg pained me so much that I had to take very frequent breaks. The muscles in my leg felt sore and the knee joint was very painful. I hobbled around and even tried to put some of my weight on a stool, thinking it might ease the discomfort. This did nothing but slow down my work. By the end of the weekend, I was very fearful that I might be getting arthritis or some such thing.

For over 60 years I have had few and very minor physical ailments, and I use my bicycle for nearly all my transportation needs. I decided many years ago that I would never let physical problems become a part of my experience, and had prayed along those lines. So I decided that I must rely even more on what I knew to be true of myself as God’s image and likeness. I had been a believer and then a student of Christian Science since childhood, with no big problems.

After having moved often and not held any church membership for several years, I had recently felt led to join a branch church in Woodstock, Illinois, where I had been a member some 15 years before. This return to church work, where I knew some of the members and met others, gave me a strong sense of home and belonging since they were all so loving to me.

I was appointed as Reader at one Wednesday night service each month, and this more intense study of the Bible and the Christian Science textbook, Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures by Mary Baker Eddy, helped me to see more clearly the unreality of any claim that man could be anything but spiritual. This change in thought alleviated much of the pain, but I was not completely healed. I was often limping in a way that was very noticeable.

At one Sunday morning service, as I was getting off my bike and going into the church, a fellow member noticed this limping. In a very loving way, she said, “Claude, you need to work on that now.” I knew that she meant I needed to pray for healing, that I couldn’t ignore this problem or try to just “get by” with it.

That statement immediately raised my thought to see my perfection as God’s image and likeness. I realized I could only be spiritual, and could have no physical problems because matter and material conditions don’t come from God.

I was healed at that moment, and have never since experienced any problem doing the same job as before, bowling twice a week, riding my bicycle everywhere in town, and ushering at our opera house for many events.

This healing has led me to look for ways that I can bring Christian Science to more of our community as I want everyone to experience and live this freedom and this love that God has for all of us.

Claude C. Smith, Jr.
Woodstock, Illinois, US

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