I was reared in a Christian home and my joining the church at an early age was simply the thing to be expected. After joining, childlike, for some time I looked for some special change in thought and feeling; but as it did not come I gradually settled down and tried to fill my place in the church as I believed I should. This I kept up for many years, but gradually doubts arose in my mind: first the fear that my religion would not stand the test of real trouble; later a belief that church work such as I was doing—raising money for church functions, doing the more menial work at socials, and so on—was not the ideal Christian work which I desired.
My husband, who was a doctor, was called quite suddenly from our home town in the Middle West to the Northwest. Having always been connected with the church I looked for a new church home, but with little success for the first six months. In the meanwhile my reading had been of a kind that made me hunger for more of the truth. Quite suddenly I was led to Christian Science, and after reading a pamphlet I had no desire for anything else. That was about eighteen years ago, and I can truthfully say that I knew from the first I had started on the right path.
As I had been in a doctor's family so many years, there were many medical laws to uncover and destroy, but the false theological ideas have been the most tenacious. From childhood I had longed for the right, but doubted my own ability. I felt that for some reason God did not think it best for me to have all good; and there was much self-pity, self-depreciation, and lack of faith. It was quite easy for me to give up medical remedies from the first; and while many things in Science seemed to depreciate my husband's work, which I knew he looked upon as about the best method of helping mankind, yet always, when coming to anything of that nature, I would decide to drop it until I had a better understanding, feeling that Truth would eventually satisfy me; as it did later.
