Like many women throughout the ages, I have struggled with the model for womanhood that the world presents to us, primarily its standard of material beauty. At times, I have tried to achieve this standard, while at other times I have striven to feel independent of its false definition. While I continue to learn, I am grateful for the healing lessons of Christian Science that, when put into practice in my life, have liberated me from sin and sickness.
During my freshman year of high school I became close friends with a dear group of girls. We nurtured and supported one another in many positive ways, but we also became entrenched in disordered eating habits and food became our god. During this time, I stopped menstruating. That summer my family moved to a different state, and I began attending a different high school. It was an opportunity to rethink my values and form friends anew. I began to eat more substantially, and I also began to study the Bible and the Christian Science textbook, Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures by Mary Baker Eddy, the Discoverer and Founder of Christian Science. My parents had read the weekly Christian Science Bible Lessons daily to my brother and me when we were growing up, but that year I began to read it daily on my own and think about its messages.
During this time, I began to have a more balanced spiritual sense of nourishment. I stopped agonizing over the caloric count of every crumb, and found that I could enjoy and be grateful for whatever kind of food I was blessed to receive each day. As my understanding of God’s power was magnified through reading Science and Health and the Bible, my fears about the supposed power of material food were diminished.
