Spiritual Journey
When I was five years old, my mom took me to a Christian Science Sunday School for the first time. I continued practicing Christian Science until I was 26, when I met my soon-to-be husband, who was a devout member of another religion.
As the mother of one child, expecting our second, I came across copies of the Journal and the Christian Science Sentine l in our local laundromat. I was working in an intensive care unit as a medical nurse at the time.
It is often the case that many people turn to God at a time of despair, and I am no exception. I first found Christian Science in my home country of Ethiopia, during an effort to improve my English.
I was named Dorothy in honor of my paternal grandmother. I’ve always loved my name and my grandmother, and was proud to be named after her.
My first copy of Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures was a small pocket edition, bought with money I earned on my first job. The job and that small volume are linked in my memory because it was my study of Christian Science that led to my finding the job.
I always had a yearning to find the true way to worship God. As a child, I thought of God as a very good, big man in the sky whom we can pray to.
Hardly a month goes by that I don’t think about how I came back to Christian Science. Almost every Christian Science Bible Lesson reminds me of that experience.
It seems, looking back, that I was always meant to be a Christian Scientist. I was raised with very little spiritual guidance.
I was raised in the Catholic faith and received a variety of explanations of God from priests, nuns, and lay people, but the common consensus was that God was unknowable. From what I could gather, He was a powerful, creative deity, and if you caught Him on a good day, He’d perform a miracle.
By the time we reach our 40’s , we’ve often come to terms with life—settled in our ways and not expecting big changes. I certainly never expected the answer to the riddle of the universe to appear at that time of my life and transform my entire existence.