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I am a fourth-generation Christian Scientist. As with every student, there comes a time to make Christian Science truly one's own. When I was in high school, the example of my Sunday School teacher, a practitioner, played an important role in my own commitment to Christian Science. After graduation from Principia College, I received Primary class instruction. At that time, I was a partner in an advertising agency in Newport Beach, California. That year, my first patient, a staff member in a client's organization, who was not a Christian Scientist, asked me for treatment and was healed.

My calling to the public practice of Christian Science came in the summer of 1973. As I sat quietly praying about my life's purpose one night, looking out over a placid Maine lake, the moon was laying a gentle path of light directly to me.

Since childhood, I felt on a quest for understanding truth. I spent summers voraciously reading book after book to solve the mystery of the meaning of my life and the world.

As a young adult, I would have identified myself as Christian, spiritual and non-religious. I am not sure if I found Christian Science or Christian Science found me.

At an early age I found Christian Science to be the surest Comforter.  It was my close companion from teen years into adulthood, healing and sustaining me during tough times and providing counsel and assurance through many decisions related to family, education, and career.

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.

"My prayer some daily good to do to Thine for Thee .." These words from a poem by Mary Baker Eddy, reflect the impetus of my life from early childhood. Raised in South Africa during the apartheid era by parents who practised Christian Science, I felt uncomfortably “doubly advantaged” – racially by State law, spiritually by what Sunday School taught about God's law.

Three generations after my grandmother found Christian Science while homesteading Canadian wheat fields, I am grateful that the gift of her example of compassionate, loving, joy-filled, consecrated practice of Christian Science continues to bless all. Early in life, through spiritual lessons learned in Christian Science Sunday School, I was led to a career in public service, moving through a series of unique experiences until I was appointed to various upper level, regulatory-management positions, where there were many joyful and challenging opportunities to apply those early Sunday School lessons and, later, what I  learned during Christian Science Primary class Instruction.

Christian Science found me while I was just a young person. I had been fairly content with life, but my experiences and something within were showing me that life had a bigger significance than what appeared.

Our family was introduced to Christian Science when my grandfather was dying of tuberculosis. Someone directed him to a Christian Science practitioner and he was healed, going on to live a long and happy life. But each one of us has to make Christian Science our own, and I found my conviction and calling in my early twenties through in-depth study and prayer when I was expecting my first child. I also had several significant healings that pointed me to the truth of Christ-centered, Jesus-patterned spirituality as taught in Christian Science.