I WANT TO EXPRESS my immense gratitude for Christian Science, because without it I never would have gotten through my rigorous PhD program, which lasted four and a half years. After strolling past a Reading Room in San Francisco in the early '90s, I decided to go in and read The Christian Science Monitor. The rest, as they say, is history.
I returned to my home in the Caribbean and started to attend services at a branch church in Jamaica. When I departed for Mississippi in 1999 to begin a PhD program, I couldn't have known the many challenges that would await me. I had to drive long distances, stay up into the morning hours, and push myself past what I thought were the limits of my endurance. But whenever I felt that some obstacle was impossible to overcome, the weekly Bible Lesson was always there to give me the specific wisdom and guidance I needed. Those challenges ranged from financial to relationships to controversies with my academic supervisors. There were times when discouragement took over, and I'd ask myself, "Why me? Why now?" But one of the greatest gifts Christian Science gave me was the direction to dig deep into the Bible, to find the truths that can be applied to any discord. With both the Bible and Science and Health as my guides, I had the strength to carry on.
One of the academic challenges I faced was that I had five different chairmen on the committee that supervised my doctoral research. The chairmen kept changing due to different circumstances: a professor would leave the university, or retire, or no longer see eye to eye with me on my research interests. I could have easily given up, but I was able to stay focused on my goal through understanding that by acknowledging God's plan for unfolding good, I could never be outside of this good. This perspective was strengthened by my appreciation of a Bible passage that says that God has always known us as His children, and therefore He has called us, justified us, and glorified us. To me, this answers profoundly the question "If God be for us, who can be against us?" (see Romans 8:28–31).
