Perhaps our closest neighbor is our husband or wife. Christ Jesus advised that those who marry "are no more twain, but one flesh." Matt. 19:6. "Marriage," the Discoverer and Founder of Christian Science, Mary Baker Eddy, says, "should signify a union of hearts." Science and Health, p. 64.
Everyone warned my fiance and me that our marriage would be difficult. He was a medical student, and I was a third-generation, class-taught Christian Scientist. At my request, my Christian Science teacher lovingly prayed for me. While I declared my willingness to accept God's plan, my fiance tried to learn enough about Christian Science to decide whether he could live with a Christian Scientist. After three years we did marry. Together we are learning to acknowledge that there is one God, one Christ, one Truth, one Church.
For me the healing of the belief that there were two faiths—his and mine—came as the result of my turning to the Lord's Prayer. We had agreed that until they were twelve, our children would attend the Christian Science Sunday School. One Sunday morning, however, my husband confessed that he bitterly regretted this promise. I was tempted to argue that he was not being honorable, but more insistent was the reasonable reaction "They are his children, too, and he loves them. I'd feel the same in his place. But we're going to tear them apart this way." The image of splitting the living child reminded me of Solomon's test to discover a child's true mother. See I Kings 3:16-28. I suggested that my husband take our two little girls to the Sunday School of his church that morning.
