TERRI FRIEL WAS on the management fast track, straight out of college and dealing with the stress of ambition, when she was diagnosed with chronic fatigue syndrome. Now a professor of operations management at Butler University in Indianapolis, Indiana, she talked to Sentinel Radio about how she found the spiritual peace that brought healing.

After graduating from the University of Louisville as an engineer, I was pretty ambitious, and I wanted to really have a fantastic career and be a plant manager by the time I was 30. I got a job with Pepsi Cola in Mesquite, Texas.

I worked for a year and a half, then suddenly started having some physical difficulties. I didn't really know what they were. I'd had mononucleosis in high school, and I knew what it felt like, just extreme fatigue. And this was like that, only it was worse. I was confused.

Being a chemical engineer, having taken years of calculus and math and dealt with very complicated problems, I suddenly couldn't focus even to wrap my mind around a problem to solve it very well.

Did you seek any help?

Yes, I did. I finally went to the doctor because it got worse and worse. There was a secretary in the building who had been diagnosed with chronic fatigue syndrome. And I said, "You know what? I think that's what I have."

I went to the doctor, and, sure enough, I had a fairly extreme case of it. I was able to get up and move around occasionally, at the beginning, but eventually I had to take disability.

Was there anything that you could do for it?

No, as a matter of fact, the doctor gave me absolutely no hope and said, "Look, there is no cure for this. The best I can tell you is to go home and sleep."

Of course, when you get an answer like that, if you're a person who questions things, then you're going to go and find out for yourself, and I did. I started looking into alternative medicines. During the time I was in Texas. I had gone on a scuba diving trip with my uncle, and I met a woman who was a Christian Scientist.We became very good friends. She spoke to me a lot about Christian Science. She showed me literature on Christian Science.

When I came back from the trip, I started feeling really bad. But I started getting more interested in Christian Science. I went to a Christian Science Reading Room to buy the Christian Science textbook, Science and Health. I took the book and started reading from cover to cover, when I was able to focus. And it was very, very slow, which I found frustrating because I'm used to reading very quickly.

What kept you reading it? Were you getting anything out of it?

I was quite often confused by what I was reading. but it was a new way to look at what I thought was reality. Mary Baker Eddy talks about how we are not material, but spiritual. I kept fighting with what I was reading in the book, I guess. But I also knew what my friend had told me.

What did she tell you?

I am not sure that there was any one thing. I just knew that she had a sense of peace about life that I had never had. There was a lot of fear and a drive in me to reach something, to be everything that I could be. And my friend didn't seem to have that desire. But it wasn't a lack of ambition—it was simply a feeling of peace that everything was OK. And I thought, "Well, if she can have it, why can't I?" So I was looking for that in Science and Health. Where was that feeling of being OK 100 percent of the time, no matter what I did? Incidental, to me at least, was the idea that illness could be cured spiritually. I wasn't really looking for a cure. I was looking for something deeper which I'd seen that my friend had.

Were there any turning points?

Yes, I went on disability in the summer, and I applied to Southern Methodist University to be a graduate assistant and study for a Ph.D. I thought going back to school would be a way to continue to progress in my life but still have a schedule flexible enough that I could sleep if I needed to. I thought that not working would reduce the stress. But it didn't.

The stress would fluctuate. Some days were good and some days were bad. And by Christmas I was very depressed about my life. Lying in bed one night, I started imagining that I was lying in God's hand.

I had used this a couple of times and found it a comforting way to fall asleep. Because, strangely enough, with chronic fatigue one of the things that you cannot do is go to sleep. You are tired, you are exhausted, but sleep doesn't come very easily. So I would imagine myself just being held in God's hand. And that would help me relax enough to go to sleep, to feel comforted. And probably Christian Science was the reason I began to feel that I could do that.

After struggling and struggling and struggling, imagining myself lying in God's hand for eight months, one night I said, "You know what? I can't do this anymore. I cannot fight this battle anymore. I can't heal myself. I can't fix my problems. I'm just really alone and frightened, and I don't know what to do. And you know what, God? I'm just going to give You all of that, and I'm going to ask You if You can help me find a way to just get through this."

I gave up that ambition to do what I thought I needed to do to be a whole person. I said, "It's in Your hands."

What was then happening with your life and the chronic fatigue?

I was able to go to school. I mean, if you look at my transcript, it's a testimony to the improvement in my ability to get around. I went from B-'s and B+'s to A-'s and A's. The intensity of it was diminishing every year, and there came a point when I suddenly realized, "I am not feeling those problems. You know what? I think I'm healed." I realized, "Oh my gosh, I guess I've been feeling good now for quite some time."

How long, then, would you say that was after you had been first diagnosed?

I was diagnosed in 1988, and it was probably 1996 or 1997 that I felt as though I was completely healed.

What was the most important part of this healing?

I guess, deep down, it's that I learned that God loves me, always and forever. You know, I was raised to feel as though I had to earn that love. And Christian Science is such a positive place to be. I was going to go back to the sense of peace that my friend had about her life. I was able to say, "Wow, I have a taste of that. I don't have to struggle like I used to." I had finally found what I saw in other people—a sense of peace.

YOU CAN HEAR MORE ON THIS TOPIC:

Visit www.sentinelradio.com and click on program # 126, "A way out of fatigue and burnout."