I grew up in a home where...

I grew up in a home where ethical values were taught and lived, but where organized religion was considered hypocritical. I was, however, allowed to attend various churches with my friends, and learned to worship and love a God that was a best friend to me—an entity whom I trusted to help me with important decisions in my life. I longed to know more about this God and felt the Bible must contain many answers for me, but when I tried read the Bible on my own I felt hopelessly confused.

In my senior year in college I began dating a young man who had grown up in a family that studied Christian Science. I suspected that the confidence I admired in him, and which seemed to set him apart from the other young men I knew, had something to do with his religion, but I was not yet ready to grasp the message I was hearing when we occasionally attended Christian Science church services. We were married and became busy raising a family and pursuing our careers. But I continued to search for answers to some of the deeper issues of life.

When our oldest daughter was about three years old, we enrolled her in a Christian Science Sunday School. By this time, my husband and I seldom attended church ourselves. Through our daughter, I began to learn what children are taught in Christian Science Sunday Schools. Some of the concepts about God and man were new and somewhat radical to me, but they were simple enough to understand, and I found them quite helpful in thinking in new ways.