Gaining Confidence in Prayer to Heal

5 year old Christi healed

When I was five years old, my mother, brother and I fell ill for several weeks, and the doctor said that we kids needed to get our tonsils out. Mom regularly took us to the Christian Science Sunday School, but my dad was not a Christian Scientist, so the decision was made to do the surgery.
The doctors promised us as much ice cream as we could eat after the operation. But when I woke up, I was experiencing more pain than I had ever felt before—more than I had dreamed anyone could ever feel. They brought the ice cream, but I was frightened to even swallow, much less to put food in my mouth first. I refused to even drink water. Then I passed out from the pain.
That was the experience from my point of view. My mom, of course, was watching and was appalled to see both her children suffering so.
When I got older, she told me that it had seemed easier to just use medicine every time we were sick, because that’s what my dad used, and she didn’t feel confident in knowing how to pray for her children. But at that moment, seeing what we were going through, she determined she would never put us through such a thing again—from then on, she would rely on Christian Science.
A couple of days after we got home from the hospital, I came down with the mumps, which I had picked up in the children’s ward. My mom started praying, but felt overwhelmed.
As mom told me the story years later, she was working hard to keep my brother away from me, because the mumps were supposed to be a very contagious disease. But she had to leave my room to fetch something, and when she got back, he was standing beside me, drinking from my glass of water.
Just then the phone rang. In despair she went to answer it, and found it was my Sunday School teacher, who happened to be a Christian Science practitioner. This kind lady was calling because it had been a month and a half since we had come to class, and she wanted to make sure everything was OK.
My mom broke into tears, telling her the whole, sad story of us all being sick and we kids having surgery, and now, just when we got home, I had come down with the mumps and my brother had just drunk out of my glass and he was going to get them, too.
That dear, sweet lady listened to the whole thing with a Christly thought and said, “Christi doesn’t have the mumps and Carey’s not going to get them.”
And that was that. I was healed and my brother never got sick.
I am very grateful for this healing. It brought the practice of Christian Science into our home. Witnessing that instantaneous healing gave my mom the confidence she needed that she could trust her children to God.
Before this, whenever I felt ill, Mom gave me a tablespoon of terrible-tasting medicine and put me to bed. I remember just lying there, feeling sick, and wishing I didn’t feel sick.
But after this healing, I always found immediate help. If I told mom I didn’t feel well, she would become very calm and quiet, put me someplace comfortable, and start talking to me about God. She would say simple things that a child could understand, such as: God is good, and He couldn’t make anything bad. And if He couldn’t make anything bad, then I couldn’t have anything bad. But she never spoke in a rote way. The words were different every time, but felt natural and suited to the situation. Years later, she told me that she would simply ask God what to say, and the ideas would just pour in. I remember those ideas feeling like cold water in a hot desert, and I always immediately felt better.
The trust in relying on God that I gained from those healings carried over into my adult life, and have led to more healings than I can count. For this I am very grateful.

Christi Lupher

Austin, Tx