Living a Lie

So far I've talked only about my spiritual awakening. Now I'm going to tell you now about the lie I was living which I had to awaken from. As you read, please remember that these thoughts I was cherishing about myself never came from the one infinite Mind, God. And if you'll think about it, to over come them all I had to do was stop believing them. Unfortunately it took me decades to truly awaken to that fact.

I think it was in eighth grade when it really all started to go south for me. That's when I started ignoring homework and escaping entirely into the safe and comfortable world of television. From then on I always did the minimum just to get by. I got a GED instead of finishing High School. I went to a two-year trade school instead of a college.

But later I wasn't happy with the limitations I thought I'd placed on my adult life. I saw myself as inadequate for everything I really wanted to do in life. I wished I could just start my life over. I first began talking about a desire to die in my teens, and had continued doing so all my adult life. If I could start over, I reasoned, then I could do it right. In Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, Mary Baker Eddy says on page 290:

“If the Principle, rule, and demonstration of man's being are not in the least understood before what is termed death overtakes mortals, they will rise no higher spiritually in the scale of existence on account of that single experience, but will remain as material as before the transition...”

That sounded fine to me; I thought that meant I actually could start over. I conveniently ignored the rest:

“...still seeking happiness through a material, instead of through a spiritual sense of life, and from selfish and inferior motives.”

So two weeks ago I found myself in a hospital room, where I sat coughing into a towel... coughing blood. And I'd been coughing blood off and on for over twenty-four hours.

I looked at the floor and thought, “If I could only just slump to the floor, I could die.” So I dropped to my knees and rested my elbows on the floor. And I silently said something along the lines of, “Okay God, I have the medical specialists' permission to die. The hospital people deal with this sort of thing all the time, so it's no big deal. And I'm not leaving a mess for my family to deal with. The conditions are perfect. Open up that white light tunnel and let me step through.”

And God said...

“No.”

This made me think of a story of Elijah in the Bible. Someone was trying to have Elijah killed. So Elijah ran away and hid in the wilderness. But after a day in the wilderness he found himself asking God to let him die. God didn't concede to Elijah's request. Instead God sustained Elijah in the wilderness. And after a time God told him to go back home, promising that he would be protected. That's in 1 Kings, chapter 19.

God wasn't going to let me out of this mess by dying, no matter what medicine said. So the only option left to me was to listen to Him and let Him lead me out of the wilderness in His way and in His time. I couldn't dictate the terms.

That's when the bleeding stopped for good.