Has there ever been a time in your life when you felt empty—that something was missing? One such time for me began in high school. I didn't even realize at first what it was. All I knew was that I was reaching for strength and direction from a higher power than myself. Later I learned that what I was searching for was a better knowledge of God and of my relation to Him. I've come to see that it is the only thing that can bring me genuine, lasting fulfillment.

As a teenager, the church I was attending wasn't answering my hunger for something more. I was dissatisfied with my progress in learning about God, and I remember praying to God to show me "the way," to lead me to know Him better.

After I graduated from high school, I was chosen as an apprentice at a summer stock theater and met many people with lifestyles quite different from my own. There were both small and large choices and decisions to be made in connection with this experience. I did the best I could, and desired to do the right thing. God was answering my longing for guidance and fulfillment even then, as I now look back, although I didn't know it at the time.

That fall I left for college, which was quite a distance from home. Again I was faced with many choices. It became evident fairly soon into my freshman year that I was still floundering, searching in the wrong direction for my peace and happiness. I met and went out with several students who drank very heavily. Smoking, also, was the thing to do. It didn't take long for me to become very dissatisfied with this way of life. I was very unhappy and homesick. I longed for evidence of lasting goodness in my life. At the beginning of the following summer, I happily returned home.

My mom had been raised in Christian Science, but when my parents married, they each turned from their very different religions and chose one they felt they could share. And so, my mom had never told me about Christian Science. I didn't know anything like it existed. About this time, she decided to study Christian Science again, and to go to a Christian Science branch church. (She had been reading things about it over the years. I remember she had several small pamphlets that she read when my dad had great challenges with the business he owned.) She asked me if I would like to go with her to a Wednesday evening testimony meeting at the local branch. She felt that I could make my own decision.

I said definitely, "Yes!" And I loved it right away. I couldn't believe that there was a church in existence that actually revealed there is a Science of Christianity. It made so much sense to me that there are laws of God—fixed rules and facts—that we can conform to and rely on, and that will in turn bring harmony and good into our experience. This is what I had been searching for. I truly had come home.

As I began to study the Bible, along with Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures by Mary Baker Eddy, and to pray more deeply than ever before, I was healed naturally and effortlessly of the desire to smoke and drink. I realized that these indulgences of the physical senses drew me away from my desire to know God and myself as His spiritual image, reflecting peace, control, and satisfaction—God-based qualities found only through the spiritual senses. I didn't feel I could progress while pulled in two different directions at the same time.

Next to the marginal heading "Standpoints changed" in Science and Health, Mrs. Eddy writes: "When understanding changes the standpoints of life and intelligence from a material to a spiritual basis, we shall gain the reality of Life, the control of Soul over sense, and we shall perceive Christianity, or Truth, in its divine Principle. This must be the climax before harmonious and immortal man is obtained and his capabilities revealed. It is highly important—in view of the immense work to be accomplished before this recognition of divine Science can come—to turn our thoughts towards divine Principle, that finite belief may be prepared to relinquish its error" (p. 322).

Christian Science answered my theological questions about God and man, about Christ Jesus, and it explained the nature of evil—the seeming existence of a power or a presence opposed to God, good. Best of all, when I began to attend church I felt tremendously loved and welcomed by the members. It was great to have a year of Sunday School, where I could ask all the questions I wanted, and the teacher would guide me to practical answers in the Bible and Science and Health. Not long after, I was healed through prayer of a cold and an injured foot, and my career moved forward in a wonderful way as I found new direction in a field I loved. Although people discouraged me from trying to make a living in this field, it proved to be very rewarding.

That was only the beginning of what has been for me a continuous journey Spiritward, exploring the broader implications of the knowledge of God and of man as His likeness. If you truly hunger to know Him—no matter what circumstance you may find yourself in—you will find Him. God is with you all along, showing you the way, even if you don't realize it at first. Jesus, the Son of God, taught his disciples, "Blessed are they which no hunger and thirst after righteousness: for they shall be filled" (Matt. 5:6). It is natural that we desire to know God better. Opening our hearts to Him will help us understand how close to Him we actually are.