One Sunday afternoon a business acquaintance of my husband's came to visit. The discussion turned to religion. I said I had given up going to church. I had been raised in a Protestant faith, attended Sunday School all my life, even joined the church when I was nine. However, I had quarreled with scholastic theology ever since childhood. It seemed illogical, contradictory, dogmatic. It gave me nothing I could use. Our visitor spoke to me of Christian Science and quoted the first sentence from the Preface of the textbook, Science and Health by Mrs. Eddy (p. vii): "To those leaning on the sustaining infinite, to-day is big with blessings." This wonderful promise was the harbinger of countless blessings for all my days to come.
Soon after, I went to a Christian Science practitioner to discover how I could become a Christian Scientist. From that interview two things are vividly etched in memory. One, I learned that my experience would improve as my thought improved. Two, I caught a glimpse of God's great love for me. If daily study of the lesson would show me the way, I was ready to begin.
That was over eighteen years ago, and now I'm a totally different person. Mrs. Eddy writes in the textbook (p. 201): "Truth makes a new creature, in whom old things pass away and 'all things are become new.' Passions, selfishness, false appetites, hatred, fear, all sensuality, yield to spirituality, and the superabundance of being is on the side of God, good." In discovering the true nature of God, I was discovering my true self, as God knows me. Some of the "old things" that passed away were smoking, drinking, and a sense of purposelessness and inadequacy.
