Article January 2, 2006 Issue

NEVER ALONE—CLOSE TO GOD

BRIAN ZAVITZ

In 1985 my marriage ended, and that was a huge shock to me. I found myself overwhelmed with feelings of failure and worthlessness, and it was very troubling. I had this sense of having lost contact with God, not knowing what was right to do in God's eyes. And at the same time I felt this agonizing loneliness, just wanting human companionship, and particularly female companionship. It was an aching loneliness, day after day.

I had been a serious student of the Bible and the writings of Mary Baker Eddy for years. But now I really plunged into them with such a direct urgency. I was like a drowning man. I was reaching out in prayer to grasp something that would save me.

There were three turning points in my search and my progress. The first one was what I would call a new contact with God. I think the God I had believed in was certainly a just God, but one you had to please. One day, quite suddenly, as I was praying, I was overwhelmed by a sense of a presence of a very different kind of God. And this was a God who was very gentle and had a great sense of forgiveness and acceptance. And this presence said to me, "Well, Brian, how are we going to work this out?" There was no overwhelming burden being placed on me. We were going to work this out together. There was no sense of urgency, no sense of condemnation.

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