By the time we reach our 40s, we’ve often come to terms with life—settled in our ways and not expecting big changes. I certainly never expected the answer to the riddle of the universe to appear at that time and transform my entire existence.
Twenty years earlier my landlady in college had given me a copy of Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures by Mary Baker Eddy. Despite the intriguing title, I fanned through it and dismissed it as some sort of religious thing. It remained unread in my collection of books, until I spied it at the top of an open crate during a move. In remembrance of the recent passing of my landlady, I began a quick scan of it, never imagining the book would radically change my life. Mary Baker Eddy admonishes readers to “emerge gently from matter into Spirit” (Science and Health, p. 485), and I’ve come to understand how the truth’s unfolding is an eternal process. Nonetheless, the transformation of my thought through my immediate reading of Science and Health was dramatic. Even with my shaky understanding, its ideas completely upended my worldview and altered my interactions with those around me.
Early in my study, I wondered what my life would have been like if I had been raised in Christian Science; if I’d been able to draw on it through all of life’s trials and challenges. What direction, strength, and comfort it would have provided! I came to realize, however, that those years of struggling to figure things out on my own were the essential preparation that enabled me to embrace Christian Science without a nanosecond of equivocation.
