I was twenty-three and not married, at a time when that was considered being an “old maid.” I was getting my master’s degree in math while teaching at Southern Methodist University (SMU) in Dallas. There hadn’t been many men around during World War II, but now the war was over.

I had been reading the book of Psalms in the Bible, and one day I got such a peaceful feeling. I’d never felt anything like it before. Not many days later, a friend of mine set another girl and me up on a blind date with two guys. I ended up connecting with one of the guys, who was back from the war and going to SMU on the GI Bill. He asked me to marry him a couple of days later. I was surprised and couldn’t give him an answer at that time, but we were together every chance we could get. 

He was living with his mother at the time, so when he was at work, I was often at his mother’s house. While my new boyfriend wasn’t a Christian Scientist, his mother was, and she had Christian Science literature all over the place. Her father-in-law had been a Baptist minister, and I was told that after his wife had been healed in Christian Science, he then preached Science from the pulpit. The brother-in-law of my boyfriend’s mother had sent her Mary Baker Eddy’s book Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, and whenever I was in her house, I would read this book.