By an anonymous Ex-Christian Scientist Group contributor.

I had pulled a muscle playing some kind of chasing game that was popular in my school one year. Because of Christian Science, I could not ask my mother for help or advice, and because I didn’t want to miss out on the game, as for once I was included in something the other kids liked and was enjoying not feeling like a total outsider, I kept playing it every day until I could barely walk normally. Every lunch time, I would race around and for a bit the pain would go, although I was a lot slower. I assumed the reason it came back worse each afternoon was due to my thinking.

One weekend, I was walking in to the village with my mother, literally hobbling behind, when she turned and started berating me for all the usual Christian Science BS. I got a bit annoyed myself, as it really did hurt very badly. I think I kind of thought this chasing game was God’s answer to how lonely I had always been at school, so I was really struggling with the injustice of having this ‘Error-fuelled’ injury that was stopping me from playing it. I really couldn’t understand it.

A few years prior to that, I had complained that when we moved to that area I had never fit in once with the kids and was lonely. “Well you know what to do about that don’t you?” I was told roughly, and that was that. And now this physical injury, which felt related to the earlier hurt. My mother snapped back at me something about how if it was that bad that I had let it get to the point that I couldn’t even walk, then maybe I would have to go and see ‘the Doc.’ The way she said ‘the Doc’ was just infuriatingly dismissive. Like the only alternative to Christian Science was bloodletting or something similar. I hobbled along behind her in mute silence, fuming, partly at her indifference and partly at her useless non-suggestion that I see a doctor.

Relief eventually came when a PE teacher saw me virtually crawling onto a basketball court, asked me why, then patiently explained that you need to rest muscle injuries. I believe he thought I was an overzealous athlete! I followed his advice and was better in a couple of days.