WHEN I WAS A LITTLE GIRL I always prayed to God. He was like a companion, but I didn't understand who God was. It wasn't until years later, in a hospital in Worms, Germany, that I felt I first began to know Him. I had somehow expected that I should find God there, in a hospital, where so many people seemed to be in need of comfort and healing.
Before then I had been working in the laboratory of another huge hospital as an MTA (medical technical assistant). Eventually, I stopped my MTA work because I wasn't too happy. I felt as though I didn't know enough about medicine, and I yearned to be able to help people more effectively. So I began studying medicine.
But I suffered daily from what I saw around me—from the misery I saw people endure. More and more, I saw that medical science did not have what I considered to be a reliable principle or system of healing. I had heard about Christian Science from one of my mother's neighbors who had devoted her life to Christian Science healing. We had talked on occasion about Christian Science, but at the time I didn't really understand this method of healing. Honestly, it seemed too wonderful to be true, and the gap was too great between all the awful pictures I'd seen of human suffering and these new thoughts the Christian Scientist was sharing with me about God's love.
