Although my brother and I did not grow up in a particularly religious household, we did attend a Christian Science Sunday School (albeit sporadically) and were encouraged to apply the spiritual truths we learned there in our everyday experience. A few years after high school, however, and in the face of family tragedy, I stopped praying and ended up seeking refuge primarily in superficial relationships, in others' opinions, and eventually in alcohol.
Then, after five years of drifting in and out of unsatisfying academic, business, and romantic situations, I sold my belongings, gave away my cat, filled my backpack, and left my home in the Midwest. Aside from planning to visit friends on the West Coast, I had no idea where I was headed or what I wanted out of life. I simply knew that I wanted to escape my circumstances. Looking back now on this period of my life, I recognize that my desire to abandon the unfulfilling course I'd been pursuing was a kind of prayer—of one weary and lost in the wilderness. It was the only prayer of which I felt capable at that time.
The friends on the West Coast whom I visited (and wound up living with for three months) are genuine Christian Scientists, for they live in a truly Christlike way. Although they were aware of my confusion and of my rejection of Christian Science, they didn't saddle me with pity, accusations, or grave predictions about my future. Rather, they must have quietly held in thought the fact of my spiritual identity and of my inherent ability to understand and manifest my true selfhood. For me at that time they demonstrated Christ Jesus' method of healing as explained by Mrs. Eddy in this passage from her book Science and Health (pp. 476-477): "Jesus beheld in Science the perfect man, who appeared to him where sinning mortal man appears to mortals. In this perfect man the Saviour saw God's own likeness, and this correct view of man healed the sick."
