From the time I was a young woman I had occasional bouts with depression. This happened when I felt unable to cope with things. I knew nothing of Christian Science then, and so I believed this was part of my makeup—I would always have to live with it. But I longed to be free from depression and the shame and fear that accompanied it.
Then about four years ago this problem became worse, and I felt as if I was losing control of my thinking and actions. The smallest household duty became a major undertaking. Everything, as I perceived it, was falling apart.
I had been studying Christian Science for several years, and had recently become a member of a branch church. I was beginning to understand my true identity as a child of God enough to know that I no longer had to accept this mental darkness as part of my being. I knew from what I was studying that I could be healed permanently, and I was willing to fight for my freedom. And it was a fight—a mental struggle with beliefs of fear, self-pity, resentment, anger. My sustenance and strength in this effort were the truths I was learning of God and man. I lived with this promising statement from Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures by Mary Baker Eddy (p. 96): "The breaking up of material beliefs may seem to be famine and pestilence, want and woe, sin, sickness, and death, which assume new phases until their nothingness appears."
