Search: healing

I was born into a Christian family that I left at the age of 10. It wasn’t until years later that I began to believe there really is a superior being, God, who created the universe.

After graduating from college and law school, I joined the United States Justice Department as a trial lawyer in the Antitrust Division and then as a special Assistant United States Attorney, prosecuting criminal cases from indictment to jury trial to sentencing. From the beginning of my legal career, whenever I went on my own ambition and talents, I would falter.

In my twenties, religion seemed outdated, irrelevant, boring. It was the ‘60s – the era of recreational drugs, the war in Vietnam, and the ‘sexual revolution.’ After attending graduate school in New York, I pursued a career on Madison Avenue in advertising and marketing.

Christian Science came into my family when Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures by Mary Baker Eddy healed two of my great grandmothers of incurable diseases. Faithful teachers in Sunday School taught me to love the Bible and to practice its teachings.

I was born in Italy and moved to Brazil with my family as a teenager. Ever since my childhood I had felt drawn to religion and spirituality even though my family was not very religious.  Brazil offered me the opportunity to pursue my spiritual search, and I was able to get better acquainted with the Bible, which I loved. Then in college I was introduced to Christian Science by the young man who later became my husband. I immediately felt it was the deep truth I was looking for.

My family was entering into the study of Christian Science during my infancy. My childhood was graced by love felt through my mother’s selflessness and trust in God. As my father grew into the practical understanding of Jesus’ teachings, he and I shared many searching metaphysical discussions. At college and graduate school I studied philosophy and then taught philosophy at the Chinese University of Hong Kong. However, this initial academic work, which I enjoyed and valued, deepened my underlying conviction that the goodness sought by the world and myself is most directly found through the study of Christian Science and its healing practice. On my return to the United States in 1971, I focused on preparation for becoming a practitioner. After entering the practice, I soon continued contact with academic communities as a Regional Representative to Christian Science organizations at universities. In the 1980’s, as a member of the Christian Science Board of Lectureship, I addressed audiences throughout the United States and in over 30 countries in Europe, Africa and Asia. Recently, I completed 10 years of service as state Committee on Publication.

As a teen I began to feel a deep intuition about the presence and power of a profoundly loving God, which became increasingly important to me. "How does God know himself and all of his creation?" I wondered.

As a child, I loved listening to Bible stories, especially healings performed by Jesus. These gifts of God’s grace seemed so natural, yet I couldn’t understand why God would not allow for such healings today.

Growing up with the stories of the healings that had brought my family into Christian Science – a great uncle healed of polio, my mother and aunt healed of leukemia – it seemed entirely natural to me, as a second-grader, to agree to pray for a sobbing playmate who asked me to do so after she tumbled off a swing-set. The fact that she quickly returned to play seemed equally natural.

A friend invited me to a Christian Science testimony meeting. That started me on a spiritual journey that has taken me from merely believing in God to a growing understanding of God as Love itself, an all-powerful and ever-present Parent.