"Can my marriage ever work out happily as long as I'm a Christian Scientist and my husband is not?" a young woman asked a practitioner.
The next patient—hardly seated—exploded, "I really believe the hardest problem a Christian Scientist can ever have is marriage to another Christian Scientist. They're unsympathetic, inconsiderate, and always right. I get so tired of hearing, 'Work it out. Correct your thinking.' Besides, it's almost always my husband's thinking that needs correcting—not mine!"
That night the practitioner's thoughts returned once more to the two women with the marriage problems. She remembered Mary Baker Eddy's reply when questioned as to what she thought of marriage: "That it is often convenient, sometimes pleasant, and occasionally a love affair." Miscellaneous Writings, p. 52; What, the practitioner asked herself, is the most important thing to understand in order to have a happy marriage, one that will be a "love affair"? Though the answer came immediately to her thought, it was a challenging one because it was a radical departure from anything she had previously considered in regard to healing human relations The answer came in Mrs. Eddy's words: "The Christian Scientist is alone with his own being and with the reality of things." Message to The Mother Church for 1901, p. 20;
