Article April 18, 1983 Issue

Childlikeness liberates

JANIS AREND CLARKE

A young father and his little son were looking forward to having a whole day to themselves. But the father couldn't shake the heaviness of heart brought on by a very difficult week at work. While in the grip of this depression, he felt his two-year-old's gentle hand and heard the words, "It's all right, Daddy. No monsters here!" And this loving, assuring gesture, with its complete conviction that there was nothing evil present, lifted that father's heart.

Where does a child get such a healing conviction? How can one know that only good, God, is present and feel the peaceful release such knowing brings? Doesn't such conviction come from childlikeness, the simple trust that God, good, is All?

When my daughter called to ask me to be with her at the birth of her first child, I was happy to say I would. Yet in the months that followed, devilish thoughts came to me, attacking my joy by saying, "What will you do if something awful happens during the birth? It's your baby who's going to have a baby. How will you react if things do not go well?" Always I recognized such thoughts as mental suggestions—fears originating in mortal mind—thus not from God, and thus not valid. My prayer became a deep yearning to respond only to spiritual sense at the time of the birth.

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