Mary Baker Eddy writes in Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, “All must sooner or later plant themselves in Christ, the true idea of God” (p. 54). As I think about my experience, I realize that I didn’t come back to Christian Science so much as become planted in it.

Christian Science was practiced in my home as I grew up. My mom read the weekly Bible Lessons from the Christian Science Quarterly and talked to the family about God and about being healed through applying the teachings of Christian Science. But we lived too far from a branch Church of Christ, Scientist, for us to attend Sunday School regularly until we moved when I was in high school.

My early experience with Christian Science has a parallel in Christ Jesus’ parable of the sower (see Matthew 13:3–8). In the parable, the seeds that fell on stony ground grew for a while, but because the soil was so shallow, the plants couldn’t take root and eventually died. Jesus explained to his disciples that the seed represented the Word of God.