This healing took place during the fall semester of my freshman year in college, but in a sense it started during the spring of my senior year in high school. 

During those last months prior to my high school graduation, I had a longing to know myself better as God’s child and to leave behind the daily anxiety and pressure from feeling that I couldn’t measure up. My high school was a tough private prep school that fostered intense competition, and I always felt just average. 

I reached out more in prayer to God and started to attend Wednesday evening testimony meetings at the branch Church of Christ, Scientist, that my family attended. I loved listening to the readings from the Bible and from the Christian Science textbook, Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures by Mary Baker Eddy, and also to the testimonies given by fellow churchgoers, which included all types of healings, some of them dramatic. I recognize now that from that desire to know myself better as God’s child, I experienced greater calm and performed better academically and socially.