True identity found

When I was very young, my parents told me that I was adopted, and this ended up being the lens through which I viewed myself. I always felt that I was unworthy because somebody had given me up for adoption—I wasn’t good enough to keep. Questions such as “Who am I?” and “What is my identity?” plagued me. This sort of identity crisis continued after I got into my adulthood and was married with a child, and it just seemed that all kinds of things were breaking down around me. 

I was working as a marketing manager at a company, and one day I had an appointment with the creative director of the advertising agency that worked on our account. I’d had a really bad day up to that point. I had broken down and cried, pulled myself together, and then gone to this meeting. 

She asked me, “How are you?” and instead of just saying the polite niceties, I said, “Do you want the truth?” And she said, “Oh, yeah, you bet I want the truth.” So then I started to tell her that I was having a bad day and about all these things that had happened. Well, we had to work, so she said, “Why don’t we make an appointment for lunch tomorrow, and get together and talk?” 

So, off we went the next day to lunch, and she shared with me that she was a Christian Scientist. I had no idea what that was—had never heard of it. I said, “Well, tell me about it.” 

She started to tell me that God was a loving God, that He loved all His children, that everyone was equally adored and cherished, and that He just wanted the best for us. 

Now, I felt an incredible sense of love from this woman, and when we parted, she embraced me and said, “You are so precious and so dearly loved.” I had a really hard time accepting that. I mean, part of me wanted to, but part of me felt really uncomfortable with that. There was a sense of unworthiness. But we agreed to meet again the following Wednesday for lunch. 

The next week she gave me a copy of Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures by Mary Baker Eddy, and she loaned me her copy of Mary Baker Eddy: Christian Healer, a biography by Yvonne Caché von Fettweis and Robert Townsend Warneck. I took those two books, and I read Christian Healer in a weekend. 

I was so impressed by Mrs. Eddy and the Christly method of healing she had discovered and shared with people. When I was reading Science and Health, I’d read three paragraphs and then think, “What did I just read?” I’d have to go back and read it again, but I persisted. And what I found was that I felt such calm and such love from what I was reading. 

About three weeks later, after we’d had lunch together each week, my friend finally turned to me one day and said: “Sharon, do you realize that since our first meeting, you haven’t said anything about being adopted?” 

I was startled by that and I had to think about it, but she was right. I searched myself and realized that whole sense of “Who am I?” and “What is my identity?” which had been plaguing me for decades, was gone. The feelings of unworthiness were gone. 

At that point I knew Christian Science was the way. I realized that my real Father-Mother was God, that I had never been abandoned, and that God was always with me. And that meant my identity was complete from the very beginning—there had never been any question about what my identity was. 

I was learning in Christian Science that man’s identity is made up of spiritual qualities such as kindness, compassion, intelligence, vivaciousness, vigor, strength. I knew I had expressed all those things at some point or another in my life, and that they were real. 

The voice that kept telling me I was unworthy or unlovable because I had been given up for adoption was starting to take a back seat to this “flood-tide of Love,” as Mrs. Eddy calls it (see Science and Health, p. 201 ), that was coming to me through the study of Christian Science.

My friend had given me a copy of the Full-Text Edition of the Christian Science Quarterly Bible Lessons, which consists of passages from the Bible and Science and Health, and she suggested that I study one section each day for six days. All of the wonderful ideas I was getting from studying the weekly Bible Lesson were telling me, over and over again, what I was and what I wasn’t, and I found this to be a comfort. It was as if my Parent, God, was telling me, “You are so precious, and so dearly loved,” just as my friend had said. 

My adoptive parents and family are wonderful. I’m very close with them. They’ve always provided me with such love and comfort and opportunities, and I’m so grateful for my relationship with them. And now, I have become a Christian Science practitioner, so I can help other people who are suffering from physical, emotional, and mental struggles, who want healing—permanent healing—and who want to understand their relationship with God. I’ve dedicated my life to that.

Sharon Leman
Toronto, Ontario, Canada