Wrestling with the Problems of “Conversion”

“I was unreconciled to my lot,” she wrote, “and at times murmured against the providence of God in thus afflicting me.” She comments on her unwise course:1BIO 33.5

I concealed my troubled feelings from my family and friends, fearing that they could not understand me. This was a mistaken course. Had I opened my mind to my mother, she might have instructed, soothed, and encouraged me.... I locked my secret agony within my heart, and did not seek the advice of experienced Christians as I should have done. No one conversed with me on the subject of my soul's salvation, and no one prayed with me. I felt that Christians were so far removed from me, so much nobler and purer than myself, that I dared not approach them on the subject that engrossed my thoughts, and was ashamed to reveal the lost and wretched condition of my heart.—Life Sketches of James White and Ellen G. White (1880), 135, 136.1BIO 33.6