When I entered a hospital to train as a medical nurse my desire was to do healing work. I could not reconcile myself to the methods used, however, and I made myself unpopular with my seniors by saying so. Then as the years passed I lost interest in the religion that I knew and used to ask why God allowed so much suffering and sorrow.
After I left the hospital I went as a special night nurse to a blind patient and agreed to read to her from the Christian Science textbook, "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" by Mary Baker Eddy. This was my introduction to the book, and I loved all I read. Enthusiastically I wrote to my relatives; but one, a minister, with whom a little later I went to stay, persuaded me by forceful argument that Christian Science was a dangerous teaching. Regretfully I agreed to leave it alone and join his denomination.
For seven years I had a wilderness experience of ill-health and fits of depression. At times I felt frustrated and reckless, inclined to self-pity. I gave up nursing and took up free-lance journalism, a work I loved; but by now I was smoking heavily and coughing almost incessantly, and the world depression affected me financially so that at times I felt in despair. One evening my brother reminded me how different I had been when reading the Christian Science textbook. Although feeling ill, I set off to attend the local branch Church of Christ, Scientist. That night I had my first peaceful sleep for months.
