MY PARENTS weren't churchgoers. Religion didn't have a meaningful place in our lives, although my sister and I attended various Sunday Schools from time to time.

My mom had a Bible that had been given to her when she was a child. The cardboard box that housed it was stained and tattered, but the Bible itself was in pristine condition—still stiff when you turned its pages. We kept it in the bottom of a cabinet where all the clutter was stashed. I found it a curiosity, and occasionally I'd pull it out to look at the maps in the back. I remember once my mom reading something from it to my sister and me, but she wasn't able to answer our questions.

One morning I was feeling ill, so Mom decided to keep me home from school. From my bed, I could see the cabinet where the Bible was kept, and began to think about it. Finally, I got up, pulled out the Bible, brought it back to bed, and started reading it from the beginning.

As I stumbled through Genesis, I had to ask my mom what some of the words were, since I was still learning to read. But I did manage to get to the second chapter, where I saw: "But there went up a mist from the earth, and watered the whole face of the ground. And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul" (verses 6, 7). The passage went on to relate how Eve was created from Adam's rib. That seemed really odd to me, after I'd just read in the first chapter that "God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them" (verse 27).

Sure enough, when I went back and read the first chapter again, I could plainly see that its full account of creation was different from what was in the second chapter. I asked my mom—who was now pushing the vacuum cleaner across the rug—why there were two versions of this story, and which was the correct one. She didn't know. I continued to puzzle over them, checking and rechecking them. Finally, I decided that since the "very good" account appeared first in the book, that must be the right one.

It wasn't until many years later that I found a truly satisfying reason why that first account in Genesis was the "right one." This happened when I began to study Science and Health, which says: "Spiritually followed, the book of Genesis is the history of the untrue image of God, named a sinful mortal. This deflection of being, rightly viewed, serves to suggest the proper reflection of God and the spiritual actuality of man, as given in the first chapter of Genesis" (p. 502).

The more I read of Mary Baker Eddy's book, the better I understood how the healing of illness results from a spiritual understanding of our unalterable relationship to God as His perfect children—which is what had begun to happen to me when I'd first explored the opening of Genesis. More and more as I read Science and Health, I loved the thought that God created an entirely good universe and peopled it with His perfect ideas, which included me. This meant that instead of struggling through life as a vulnerable human being descended from Adam and Eve, I could live my life as a pure expression of God.

The Genesis story later played a big part in helping me overcome feelings of insecurity, self-condemnation, and even guilt, which had sprung from growing up in a home where there was often family friction and disharmony. Gradually my deepening understanding of my relationship with God enabled me to fully acknowledge my self-worth and feel free to enjoy a purposeful life. I was constantly encouraged by the thought that we are all "the children of light, and the children of the day: we are not of the night, nor of darkness" (I Thess. 5:5).

Reassurances of our perfection are a strong thread throughout the Bible. As I've found out, it's a book that's deep in meaning and practical in application, yet simple enough for a child to understand.