IF SOMEONE HAD TOLD ME years ago that one day I would be in the public practice of Christian Science healing, I would have shaken my head and said, "No chance; that's not for me." A few of the many reasons would have included that I felt I wasn't a good enough person, was not an academic (which I mistakenly thought was necessary for the practice), and had no desire to study this Science.

What changed?

There was a time in my life, after graduating from the Christian Science Sunday School, when for about 12 years I cut myself off from God. I got into wrong relationships and let my moral standards drop. Then my marriage started to break down, and I was constantly ill. I felt I had lost my purpose in life and that nobody would care if I wasn't here anymore.

When I was at the bottom of the pit, I found I was desperate to get back to God. Eventually, I spoke to a Christian Science practitioner and asked her for help. During our conversation, I felt as if love was being poured all over me, and that night I had the most beautiful restful sleep I had had for many months.

Over the next few months, the practitioner continued to pray for me through a divorce, holding my hand through many challenges and offering strong metaphysical support. She made me feel loved and needed. Through our prayer together, I got back a sense of worthiness, and, best of all, I felt wrapped in God's Father-Mother love. Previous bad habits dropped away, and my life became purposeful again. That experience left me with a deep desire to help others. I knew that I could not keep the kind of love the practitioner had shown me to myself. It had to be shared.

Shortly after, I took Primary class instruction in Christian Science healing. This taught me how to study the Bible and Science and Health more deeply. I studied the healings of Jesus Christ. I also loved reading about Mary Baker Eddy— especially about her simple family background and the early part of her life when she went through a divorce and just never gave up on her search to understand how to heal. And I loved finding out about the early pioneers of the Christian Science movement and how their desire to heal guided them into the public practice of healing. Many of them had gone straight into the practice after taking a similar course in Christian Science healing. These people inspired me and made me think that was what I wanted to do. I started reading Science and Health through, and when I finished, I read it again and again.

During this time, I found myself experiencing work-related problems, financial difficulties, a second marriage breaking up, and a challenging family illness. As I prayed my way through all these difficulties, I used the ideas from the Bible and Science and Health and applied them to all my immediate needs. Gradually, my life began to take on order, harmony, balance, better health. I learned that Christian Science is based on divine Principle, on God's laws of good, which, when understood, lead to better health, better morals—better everything. But essential to this was an understanding of the great example set by Jesus. He demonstrated God's law of Love in action. And I saw that following his teachings as to how he had put these rules into practice was essential to healing.

With this new understanding, I found I was able to help people through prayer, with some of the same challenges I had faced, and so my practice of Christian Science healing began.

Now, after starting my public practice of Christian Science, I look back and can see how I was guided into this work by the attraction of the Christ. I was compelled to share the divine Science that had given me back my completeness and taught me that God is Love.

Mrs. Eddy wrote, "Remember, thou canst be brought into no condition, be it ever so severe, where Love has not been before thee and where its tender lesson is not awaiting thee" (The First Church of Christ, Scientist, and Miscellany, pp. 149-150). This same Love freed me from illness and unhappiness, and is waiting to help and heal everyone.