This testimony can express only a small portion of the gratitude I feel for a lifetime of blessings! To attend a Christian Science Sunday School from an early age was a wonderful privilege, and it has been a great joy to see my children and grandchildren have the same experience.
My happy acceptance of what I understood of Christian Science undergirded all my early years but was never severely tested until my husband suddenly passed away when our son was just past two and I was pregnant with our second son. Family and friends poured love and support into our lives, but I felt lost and empty— unable to reason spiritually beyond the childlike conviction that God is Love, despite what was going on in my own experience.
This difficult period did not end quickly or easily, but through it I learned to love the promise contained in this explanation of the Bible term wilderness. It's given in Science and Health by Mrs. Eddy (p. 597): "Wilderness. Loneliness; doubt; darkness. Spontaneity of thought and idea; the vestibule in which a material sense of things disappears, and spiritual sense unfolds the great facts of existence."
