I WAS RAISED in Christian Science, and I never minded being thought of as different because I relied on Christian Science instead of material remedies for healing. Life was good, and although I had had many healings in my life of everything from exam worry to injuries from a car accident, I'd never really been faced with something that made me feel out of control, outside the scope of God's love.
At least that was true until about ten years ago, when I faced what I think of as a "wilderness experience," a time when I felt completely out of control and everything that mattered to me seemed to be at risk. For a couple of years, my husband and I had been hoping to but not succeeding in starting a family, and my husband's business was in serious trouble due to factors outside his control. Then the business situation reached a critical stage. My husband was served with the first step in the process toward bankruptcy. We had only four weeks to find several million pounds (an amount entirely outside our reach) or lose our home and everything we had worked for. I felt powerless and mentally very alone.
During this time I continued to go to church and listen to the weekly Christian Science Bible Lesson on CD, but I did it because that was what I thought I was supposed to do, rather than to find comfort or inspiration. I really hit rock bottom mentally and had reached a stage where prayer, something I had happily relied on in the past, just seemed like a bunch of words, with nothing behind them to give any real comfort. I felt I had lost all faith that prayer could bring a solution.
