Finding a Way Back Home

I was raised in a sheltered environment as a Christian Scientist (you know, the folks who don't go to doctors), and even attended a school for Christian Scientists. I graduated and went off to college in D.C. where suddenly no one cared if I went to class, stayed out all night or did whatever. To say I was thrown off balance is to put what happened to me mildly. By the end of my first semester, I was on academic probation, having failed two courses and barely passed the others. I had given up church attendance, was dating a fraternity guy, and experimenting with drinking and other things. And I was miserable.

One spring evening I sat behind the library almost in tears when the thought came: "Go to church."

"No way," I thought, "I'm done with that." But the thought persisted, until the next thing I knew I was sprinting across campus back to the dorm to change my clothes (those were the days when skirts and dresses were the only acceptable attire in church.) I got changed and to the bus in record time. As I walked into the building, the congregation was singing a loved and familiar hymn and I felt like I had come home. The Scripture readings that night were centered on Jesus's words, "Where your treasure is, there will your heart be also." By the time that service was over, I knew who I was and what was important to me.

I walked out of church that night having made Christian Science my own, and have never looked back.

And for me, the proof that I was being led by God that night came several weeks later when my beloved older brother passed on in the course of his duties as a naval officer. Had that happened prior to my "return home," I could not have borne it. But because I had found my God and my center, He brought me through unscathed.