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My family was introduced to Christian Science after my great uncle was healed of a debilitating disease. From a young age, I felt a strong desire to travel and help others.

In Junior High School my girlfriend asked my religion. I finally “confessed” to being a Christian Scientist.

I am happy to have been raised in a Christian Science Sunday School, where I learned my relationship to God, our Father-Mother, was most important. I joined The Mother Church while a teenager and married at 19. Afterwards, my husband refused Christian Science in the home. Nine years later, I was faced with a frightening diagnosis but was healed overnight with the help of my mother’s prayerful support.

What do counseling at-risk youth, running an emergency shelter, working as a wilderness ranger, teaching, and coordinating community outreach programs all have in common? These were jobs that led to my being in the full-time practice of Christian Science! Even as a child, lessons from the Bible and Mary Baker Eddy's writings had encouraged and shown me ways to help others.  Christian Science gave me a love for Christ Jesus; it also enabled me to follow him by showing how prayer transforms experience by transforming thought.  Whether confronting hostile situations, battling a forest fire, or facing physical challenges, prayer enabled me to get beyond the appearance of things to the spiritual truth that brought healing solutions. As God’s love became more real to me and the mental nature of experience became more apparent, so did opportunities to heal.

During college, a significant healing established me on a path to not only better know and understand God, but also to understand why that mattered . After being ill in bed for a week, I was healed overnight after a Christian Science practitioner (whom I’d asked to pray for me) spoke to me about the First Commandment in a way that challenged and revitalized my thinking.

As a child growing up in Nevada and California, our family was very enterprising. Though we didn’t have a great deal materially, I watched as my mother’s brand new study of Christian Science began to bring much good into our lives.

Growing up in a loving Christian Science home in California, I witnessed and experienced many healings through prayer. Later, after unfruitful years of exploring different modes of thinking and behavior, I found myself drawn back to the truths, the universal spiritual laws I had learned as a child--the pure and deeply practical teachings of Christian Science.  I knew this was the Truth -- the unwavering nature of God's love, the supreme power and grace of God's goodness -- that I had found nowhere else.  I experienced healing and a deep yearning to understand more of God, which led me to take Primary class in 1983.

The value of Christian Science, not just as a system of healing but as a way of life, became clear to me while attending Sunday School in Patchogue, Long Island, New York. I learned at an early age that God is ever-present, omnipotent Love, and that man is God’s reflection and expression. This was a saving grace! As I became aware that not everyone knew or understood that divine reality and its application, I realized that I wanted to spend the rest of my life studying, applying, demonstrating, and sharing the gospel, or the good news of Christian Science.  Consequently, as the only Christian Scientist in a high school with 2,000 students, I had several opportunities to speak with sociology and comparative religion classes. Then, similar opportunities were presented in college. This is where my work in the public practice of healing began. After college, I trained and served as a Christian Science nurse for 10 years, before becoming a Journal -listed practitioner in 1981and a teacher of Christian Science in 1985. Since then, I have served on the Board of Lectureship, as Second Reader at The Mother Church, as Vice President of the Board of Education, have written for the periodicals of the Christian Science Publishing Society, and have been interviewed for the Sentinel Radio Program and on an audio chat for spirituality.com.

Deborah grew up in a Christian Science family where spiritual healing was considered just the normal way of handling life’s problems, including illness. Over the years she witnessed her parents quickly heal many childhood diseases and even the effects of accidents and illness in their pets.

When I was a teenager, my family moved to a small West Texas town. There, I met a family who were students of Christian Science.