IMAGINE IT. YOU'RE A YOUNG parent juggling the demands of children, a spouse, and an active household. Then there's that not-so-subtle nudge you're getting to plunge into a brand-new career. The rub is that the nudge isn't ambition knocking, or even the prodding of well-meaning friends or family members who want to see you progress. It's a divine nudge. A spiritual impetus you can't ignore. What do you do? if you're Jill Gooding, you dig in your heels and do your best not to give in. "It did seem logical to resist at first," says this East Molesey (Surrey)-based Christian Science practitioner and teacher. "I had small children.I thought, Not now. This isn't the time."
There's a smile in her voice as she says the words: Not now. This isn't the time. And yet the smile isn't because after 40-plus years in the practice, 20 years as a teacher, and stints on both The Christian Science Board of Lectureship and The Christian Science Board of Directors, Jill sees her early resistance as a futile attempt to postpone the inevitable. Rather, it's because even in those early days of young motherhood, at a time when the practice seemed an impossibility, Jill was already actively engaged in helping others—as she had been since college. "It wasn't the full-time practice," she remarks, "but I'd always wanted to help people. And people would come to me for help or to talk things over. So the idea of committing myself to helping people through prayer was, in a sense, a confirmation of a commitment I'd made years before to consistently see things from God's perspective." Jill was, quite literally, already in the practice—the practice of looking out from God to see the spiritual reality of His creating. And it wasn't long before that commitment translated into a listing in the directory of this magazine. Jill was moving forward—even if it still was, in her words, "with great resistance."
From the beginning, Jill, it seems that a big lesson you had to learn was trust. Trust that if God was nudging you toward the public practice of Christian Science, there would be a way for you to make—and fulfill—that commitment. And trust that He would show you how your other responsibilities were already woven together seamlessly with the practice. That there wouldn't be conflict.
