IT WAS 7 A.M. AND I WAS SITTING ON A HILL over 4,000 miles from home feeling completely lost. Physically, I knew where I was, but mentally—well, I was feeling pretty bleak. Two weeks previously, I'd left the United States for a five-week art study abroad trip to France. I should have been really excited, but the joy of this experience was being drowned in wave after wave of self-pity, confusion, and sadness.
The previous summer before my trip, I'd had some challenges involving illness, relationships, and school. I was feeling depressed about these past events, and was very impressed with how big they seemed. I'd held on to these past events, magnifying them, and then tried to make them disappear by praying with spiritual truths I had learned in my study of Christian Science. While I was grateful to be on this study abroad, and hoped that the change of scenery would help make the mental darkness disappear, I quickly discovered that because I had made such a big deal out of the depression, it was very hard to climb back out of this hole. Even when some inspiration came to me, I was so quick to counter it with something negative that I was actually regressing instead of progressing in my mental state.
I saw that there had never been a time where I had been hurt or separated from God. I stopped basing my life on sad moments in the past and started basing my life on Love, now.
