When I was a teenager, my family moved from the town where I grew up to a new town so that my father could accept a career advancement. At the time, I was entering my junior year in high school. The move seemed quite traumatic to me. I felt I was being uprooted from my lifelong friends, including my very best friend, as well as from cherished school and community activities and the only home I could remember. Since I was a Christian Scientist, it was natural for me to turn to God for help any time I had problems. That summer, I began to earnestly read Science and Health, and to pray to God. I was seeking to find relief from what felt like a great loss in my life.
On the first day at my new high school, I did not know a single person. Far worse, it seemed, was that no one knew me! No one knew that I was a champion swimmer, a ballet dancer, and a scholar. My thought of my identity had been based on these achievements. These activities had always defined me, I believed, among my friends and in my former community. Now I felt lost.
I sat alone in a garden area at lunch time and prayed to God. I prayed to know that I was never separated from God, good, because I was His perfect idea. I knew that as His idea, I was complete and could never truly be alone. Suddenly, a girl approached me and began a conversation. She was also a new student, and our conversation that day was the beginning of a very close high-school friendship. I knew, as we talked on that first day, that our meeting and our friendship was God-provided. It was an answer to prayer.
