Changing Your Course

In Science and Health, Mary Baker Eddy writes on page 253, “If you believe in and practise wrong knowingly, you can at once change your course and do right.” Learning this since coming here to Plainfield Church has made an enormous difference in my life.

There were many years that I was very anti-social. I worked solitary jobs that had minimal contact with people, and did my best for a long time to keep most everyone away from me. Generally, if I had to interact with people, I was not nice at all. My basic thought was, “If I treat my family well and work hard, nothing else should matter.”

When I came here in 2013, it was after a prolonged downward spiral. It became clear that on all fronts I had failed, and everything about what I thought, and believed, and did, was the cause. That was the biggest reason I wanted to commit suicide: I believed everything about me as a person was toxic.

But then God brought me to Plainfield, and I started to learn that the garbage I had thought was my identity was just a lie that I could stop giving power to. As Mrs. Eddy said, I could change my course and do right.

So here I am, learning to live Christian Science. The best example I can give of the transformation I have gone through — other than the joy and purpose I have in my life now — is a day I had a few weeks ago. I went on a long car ride, and at two different stops I had four people come up to me and ask me various questions. There were a lot of other people around, yet they came to the big guy with a beard, the man who many used to call, “unapproachable.” And, I was happy to help them.

I am really happy to be here and learning the new, better way! I thank God, Christian Science, this church, and my practitioner for showing me the way to love my neighbor, and also to love myself.