I WAS RAISED AS A CHRISTIAN in the South, a church-going region of the United States. As a child, I was taught to pray to God and attended Sunday School and church every Sunday. But by the age of 19, I felt that God didn't love me and had forsaken me, because He had allowed me to go through so much pain and to see so much suffering. There seemed no way to escape.
I love children, and after about a year of marriage, I found that I was having difficulty having a child. After surgeries following two ectopic pregnancies, I was in great pain most of the time, mentally and physically. Aside from all my physical ailments, my marriage was in bad shape, and I carried the burden of an unhappy past with parents who were addicted to alcohol and who finally divorced. I didn't know how to stop the pain. It had been with me so long that it seemed normal.
Then one rainy night, a friend and I were running toward our bus stop. I suddenly looked down on the watery pavement and found I was stepping over a magazine— The Christian Science Journal. I had never heard of "Christian" Science before, but the words Truth, Love, and Peace on the cover stood out to me as though they were lit up in bright neon lights.
