This testimony is the expression of my deepest gratitude for...

This testimony is the expression of my deepest gratitude for Christian Science, and for all it has done to heal me physically, mentally, and morally.

I was raised in Christian Science, but not really ever having understood it, I drifted far afield during college. I became involved first in drinking, then with marijuana, and finally with hallucinogens. I was very much in what could be termed the "hippie" style of life. I felt I was free to do and have everything I wanted, and that this freedom would bring me both fulfillment and happiness—would enable me to really live. I thought it all so full of peace and love that it was some time before I woke up and realized that the last thing I really possessed was peace or love. The superficial structure was there, but inside I was full of anger, even hatred, toward friends I thought were using me. I had much self-love and pride, and I was desperate for any morsel of inner peace I could hang on to. "Really living," I found, is not the key to happiness or self-fulfillment it is advertised to be.

It was after much emptiness that I began waking up and realized that if I turned to God wholeheartedly I really would gain peace. For the first time I valued God above all else in my life. I began the task of working to obey the First Commandment. Little by little, first one problem then another fell away. Things that seemed at first unfair turned out to be blessings, and I was healed. After seeing and experiencing all the things which young, and older, people consider today to be the ways of personal freedom and happiness, I have found, in the truth taught by Christ Jesus and written about in Science and Health by Mrs. Eddy, true freedom and happiness, and complete fulfillment as an individual.

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April 7, 1973
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