I was raised in a family of Christian Scientists and had daily contact with Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures by Mary Baker Eddy. The summer I was sixteen, I listened to a recording of the book while I sewed. Gradually, I found my interests diverging from those of my friends, who were becoming involved in drugs and alcohol. This culminated in my feeling distinctly instructed by God to leave my home—where I was very happy—and finish my high school education in another state. My parents agreed to let me do this. Conscious that I was on a spiritual adventure, I went to live with my sister and her husband. During this period I felt wonderfully alone with God, hid with Christ, and free to pursue my school and spiritual activities to the fullest.
Soon after the move to my sister's, I experienced an overnight healing of a broken toe. My whole gymnastics class had heard it break when my foot slammed into the vaulting horse. From the school office I called a Christian Science practitioner whose number I found in the telephone book. She helped me understand that God's love and care for me were constant and were not subject to accidents. What has stayed with me through the years was her explanation that even the memory of hearing the break, which seemed so distinct at the time, was nothing more than a dream. How could God's image, man, be anything but perfect? I studied the Bible Lesson (found in the Christian Science Quarterly) again when I got home, and then fulfilled a babysitting obligation that gave me quiet hours to pray and study passages from Science and Health. I held to the thought that, in the reality of Spirit, I had not been in an accident. I was in awe that there was no swelling or discoloration. I was free to dance for hours the next evening at a wonderful gathering for young Christian Scientists in the area.
I read Science and Health through for the first time while I was in college. As I was finishing the book, my future husband, then critical of Christian Science, and I found enough common spiritual ground to feel we could care for and support each other for a lifetime. We were soon married, and I will always be grateful for the spiritual center of our affections.
