In every business meeting in my branch church, the moment for “new business” would come up, and the topic would be gently raised that our church had been without a full-time Christian Science practitioner for decades. The membership would be reminded to pray about this void, and I would gladly dive into prayer about it on my drive home. At times I felt quite hopeful that this need for active, committed public healing practice would be supplied by God. A few times I even thought how nice it would be if the yet-to-appear practitioner would have a little family! But essentially, I would forget about it in the midst of the demands of my busy life with young children until it was again raised at the next meeting.
Finally, during the moments before one of these meetings adjourned, I was cherishing this desire for active, consecrated practice to support the church and the community, and a loud, unavoidable question popped into my thought: “What about you?” It actually startled me. But before I could really consider it, even while I knew it came from God, there flowed forth a long stream of reasonable objections: I had a young family that took nearly all of my time. My husband was gone all week on the West Coast working, and only home one night a week before returning to his project. I owned and ran a little restaurant that was my dream job. I was too young to consider such placid work as the practice. I had other talents that suited me better. I was already doing plenty of work for church—the kind of work that fitted in with my life as it was.
Nevertheless, the arresting question posed to me would not be dismissed. It followed me around wherever I went, whatever I was doing. Then, not too much time went by before I was elected to the position of Second Reader, which I accepted with some trepidation. On the way home from that meeting, through tears of self-doubt, I promised God that if this was what was being asked of me, I could do it—with His help.
