My first career was working in a medical science-based health-care field. I loved this work and felt led to go into it because of my desire to help people. 

In addition, as a teenager, I had committed myself to being a practicing Christian. As I moved into adulthood, I found myself exploring various Christian denominations to understand how Jesus’ healing works could be practiced today. In my late twenties, I was introduced to Christian Science and found that it had the answers I had been seeking.

I began my study with the absolute basics, finding the testimonies in the periodicals to be the most I could understand at the time of this Science of Christ and its revelation of the omnipotence—the healing power—of God, divine Love. As with all things in life, we need to learn the basics before we can advance to a higher understanding and demonstration. Mary Baker Eddy, the Discoverer of Christian Science, in speaking of Christ Jesus as our Exemplar, writes, “He does not require the last step to be taken first” (The First Church of Christ, Scientist, and Miscellany, p. 217).

God will not leave us, because God is omnipresent Love.

As I continued to study over the next couple of years, I became more and more convinced of the truth that Christian Science brings to light and its practicality. This led to my feeling a great sense of conflict while working in a major teaching hospital. I knew that the dedicated workers in the hospital were acting according to their highest sense of right as they cared for their patients. But for me, the premise of life being subject to disease didn’t mesh with what I was learning about God as the only cause and as having created everything “very good” (Genesis 1:31).

At the time, I had a young family that very much required my financial contribution, and because of the highly specialized nature of my field, I was unable to readily move to another area of work. I sought help from a Christian Science practitioner in dealing with the uncertainty I felt every time I walked through the hospital’s entrance. In essence, she encouraged me to do my highest sense of right in whatever work I had to do. I was grateful that the practitioner expressed absolutely no condemnation for where I was working. Her counsel reminds me of Jesus when he sought to be baptized. When John the Baptist said that it was Jesus who should be baptizing him, rather than the other way round, Jesus replied, “Suffer it to be so now: for thus it becometh us to fulfil all righteousness” (Matthew 3:15).

Not long after my call with the practitioner, I received a clear message from God that my purpose was to love every patient I worked with. Regardless of the diagnosis or prognosis recorded, I could know that it wasn’t true of God’s perfect, spiritual creation. With this new perception of my purpose as being to love, the sense of inner conflict completely lifted.

I came to understand more fully that God is omnipresent, so I couldn’t be out of Love’s presence, whether in a hospital or anywhere else, and neither could the patients I worked with. I could tell that this change in my attitude more clearly reflected God’s love because of how frequently patients expressed their appreciation to me. 

It was not long after this that I was able to make an unexpected career change from the clinical setting to an academic position—which was all the more remarkable because at the time I did not have all the necessary qualifications for the new position. And over the next 15 years, as I increasingly committed myself to Christian Science, the way opened for a new academic position completely outside of the health sciences. From there, I devoted myself to reducing my academic employment and gave time to the public practice of Christian Science healing. Five years later, I resigned from all other employment and devoted my full time to the practice of Christian Science and began to advertise in The Christian Science Journal.

When our desire is wholly grounded in God, we are seeking to relinquish belief in the reality of a material existence, and we will progress. God will not leave us, because God is omnipresent Love, and divine Love never forsakes its cherished offspring. As I look back on this journey, although there were ups and downs in my involvement in Christian Science, there was a consistent desire to understand and practice it.

My journey involved drawing closer to God in my thought, step by step. As the Christian Science textbook, Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, explains, “When we wait patiently on God and seek Truth righteously, He directs our path” (Mary Baker Eddy, p. 254). 

There is no power that can stop our progress in understanding and demonstrating the Science of Christ.

The book also encourages readers: “Rise in the strength of Spirit to resist all that is unlike good. God has made man capable of this, and nothing can vitiate the ability and power divinely bestowed on man” (p. 393). The “strength of Spirit” comes from Christ, the true idea of God. Christ enables us to rise from the belief of life as material and limited to the understanding that all life is in and of Spirit, God, and governed by Him alone. With this God-endowed strength, we can resist and overcome all that is not of God.

Regardless of where we might find ourselves, when we put into practice our desire to follow the example of Jesus, the master Christian—knowing that there is only one Life, God, and that we are created and governed by God—the way will open up to new and brighter paths. There is no power that can stop our progress in understanding and demonstrating the Science of Christ.