I was a pupil in a Christian Science Sunday School as a child, but during my teenage years the family dropped away from Christian Science. When I graduated from college, I faced underemployment, and a deeply rooted mental disturbance troubled me for twelve years. Psychiatric treatment culminated in three court-ordered hospitalizations. One doctor's diagnosis was "undifferentiated schizophrenia," meaning "out of touch with reality". In the midst of this difficulty, I turned once again to what I had learned in Sunday School. Because Christian Science describes reality as God and God's thoughts, I reasoned that even if I couldn't understand mortal existence, I could understand God. I wanted to return to and serve the Church I remembered with love, and gradually I progressed toward membership.
During the second hospitalization I was too discouraged to speak to my psychiatrist, so he dropped the case. As I appealed to God for healing, a "still small voice" like that in First Kings (see 19:9-12) spoke to me, saying, "Galen, awake." This made me wonder who I am, and I began to see that the Bible was not merely history, but a living inheritance to which I belonged. Through my ongoing prayer and study, I was healed of smoking tobacco, and I was released from the hospital to a local Christian Science nursing facility. The Christian Science practitioner who treated me during this time asked me to learn every name of God I could find in the Bible, explaining to me that I would learn all I needed to know about myself by learning about God.
I was able to establish a home of my own. There I studied the name and nature of God in verses from the Bible Lessons found in the Christian Science Quarterly. Justice, righteousness, charity, chastity, lovingkindness, mercy, peace, and truth inhabited my thoughts. This prayer and study corrected errors of opinion, influenced my choices, and moderated my behavior. I was working hard on this project when the still small voice said, "My name is Love." I began to see my identity was one with the Mind (God) speaking to me; and my intellect was not out of touch with Mind, but reflected Mind. This new sense of myself as God's spiritual image became the rock of my hope for Christian redemption, and prevented me from repeating past sins.
