Years ago, I found a Christian Science Sentinel in a beauty shop. I opened the magazine to an article about a young girl losing her locket, the family praying for its return, then finding the locket in a street gutter—and it cleaned up like new. I thought there might be hope for me after all.

Allow me to explain. Church attendance did not exist in my childhood home. My brother first began attending church as a teen, and I followed. I loved the people, and they loved me. But I could not accept the teaching of eternal separation from God for those who did not believe.

After marrying while still a teen, I attended my husband’s church. The church family was a boon to me, but I soon began to question the teachings that Jesus was God and that eternal hell awaited nonbelievers.

When my husband was serving in the United States Navy, we attended church services on different military bases. On an overseas base, some Christian missionaries we met in a service lodge nearby again felt like family.

I began to read authors like the Indian poet Tagore and Albert Schweitzer. I started to search for my own view of Jesus and life.

When I came to feeling hopeless about my own redemption, deeply depressed and irritable, I left my family—my husband, two teenagers, and one young child—thinking that they would be better off without me.

I felt impelled to go to a city in the southwestern United States. I found work cleaning rooms in a retirement apartment complex, and I attended a church service of another Christian denomination. After the service I asked one of the ministers about the difference between Genesis chapter 1 and Genesis chapter 2 and was told that Genesis 2 was an instant replay of Genesis 1. I wasn’t satisfied with that answer and didn’t attend another service there.

After several months, I found that I longed to be with my family again. I asked to return. My husband welcomed me back and offered to drive several hours to pick me up. Before the day of his arrival, I went to get my hair cut in that beauty shop where I saw the Sentinel magazine and the article about the young girl finding her locket. 

After I was finally reunited with my family, I looked up Christian Science in the phone book. I met with a Christian Science practitioner nearby. She gave me the book Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures by Mary Baker Eddy. I read it for hours each day. I found a branch Church of Christ, Scientist, right in my own town. And I found love there.

The road since finding Christian Science has not been without its challenges. But I know that I have found in the teachings of the Comforter what I recognize as always having been true. I am grateful for the light Christian Science throws on the Bible, especially the spiritual sense of the Bible. I had found in the first chapter of Genesis that I am God’s image and likeness, very good. So, I was happy to find this in Science and Health: “The great spiritual fact must be brought out that man is, not shall be, perfect and immortal” (p. 428). And I am grateful that God lovingly guides me in this understanding, and to know that God sent His Son, Christ Jesus, into the world to guide us to this eternal Truth.

Our family has experienced many healings through prayer: of a cyst, a chronic ear infection, broken bones, intense pain, sick headaches, fear while flying, menstrual cramps, and depression. Most important, I now know God as Love and understand my relationship to Him as His beloved child, and that He is the loving Father-Mother of all. Nothing and no one can ever separate us from this infinite, ever-present Love.

I am thankful for having had the opportunity to serve my church as Reader, Sunday School teacher, board member, Reading Room librarian, and in other positions. My Christian Science Primary class instruction continues to bring new spiritual insights. 

The Bible says, “It is God which worketh in you both to will and to do of his good pleasure” (Philippians 2:13), and I have surely found this to be the case. My heart overflows with gratitude.