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No empty nest
When our younger son left home about four years ago, it was a wrench, but because our elder son was still living with us at the time, I didn’t give the so-called “empty nest syndrome” much prayerful thought. But a few years later, when our elder son bought his own home and was preparing to move out, I knew I needed to pray deeply about this new chapter in my life.
Mary Baker Eddy, who discovered Christian Science, assures us: “False fears are foes—truth tatters those, / When understood” (Poems, p. 79). I realized I needed to examine the false fears suggesting themselves to me. The fears that immediately came to thought expressed themselves as feeling cut off from our sons, feeling alone, and the suggestions that I would no longer be needed or have a sense of purpose. But then I remembered that Mrs. Eddy says: “Each successive stage of experience unfolds new views of divine goodness and love” (Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, p. 66). I understood that both our sons were moving forward under God’s guidance and care, and if our sons’ departure from the family home was Mind-impelled and Love-directed, then the blessings from their right activity would have to include me and my husband. I prayed with the truth that, as the hymn tells us, “No child can ever stray beyond / The compass of infinitude” (Rosemary Cobham, Christian Science Hymnal Supplement, No.443). I knew I was also included in that compass of infinitude, the allness of Love, so in truth my sons and I could never be separated; we would always be at one with God and therefore at one with each other. None of God’s beloved ideas can ever be cut off from or separated from good.
One morning, as I was praying about this situation, a few words came to mind in the shape of a poem. I grabbed pencil and paper, and wrote the words down as they unfolded to my waiting thought. It was as if Mind was speaking directly to me about our sons. This was the poem that came to me that morning:
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