When I was in the third grade, I did not care for arithmetic. But every Friday we had speed drills: twenty problems to be solved in twenty minutes. For a couple of weeks I panicked and didn't even try; I'd just write down whatever numbers came to me. (It never occurred to me that I might actually be able to solve the problems.) My teacher saw my dilemma, though, and decided to help me solve it.
One Friday, just before the speed drill, she came to the back of the room where I was sitting (in the hope of escaping attention), led me to her own desk up front, sat me down at it, gave me a clean sheet of paper and a newly sharpened pencil. Then she said, looking at me with confidence and love, "Do just one problem at a time." Something made me feel I could do it. So I started in, intending to do just one. Having finished the first, however, I went on to the second. And the third, and so on. When the twenty minutes had passed, I had done all twenty problems. I don't recall my exact grade, but it was between 90 and 100 percent; and I never had trouble with those speed drills again. I found out later that my teacher was a devoted Christian Scientist. Without talking about it, she had introduced me to the source of her confidence and love— Christian Science.
Later, my mother became interested in Science. I didn't pay much attention to it at first, however, because Mother had, in preceding years, taken up and then left one unorthodox Christian religion after another. When she took up Science, however, she never put it down.
