Olga Chaffee: You're listening to The Herald of Christian Science presented by The First Church of Christ, Scientist, in Boston, Massachusetts. I'm Olga Chaffee. We've been talking about facing pressures—either from others or from yourself.

Laurie Haas: And I'm Laurie Haas. The person we're going to hear from tells us about a time when she was feeling very hurried and rushed. She was careless and got herself into quite a difficult circumstance. Her name is Dorothy Stoddart. She's from Oxford, England.

Dorothy Stoddart: I was working with a chemical substance, a very strong weedkiller. I knew there were instructions and warnings on the bottle, but I disregarded them. One instruction was not to work in a confined space. But I was working in a very confined space, a small shed with the door closed.

I dropped the bottle, and it broke. At that point I found that the lock on the shed door was also broken, and I couldn't get out. I began to panic. All I could do was stay in there with the fumes and call for help until somebody came to rescue me. By the time I got out I was having very severe breathing problems. I became very weak. Every movement was a terrific effort for me. And I was frightened.

I began to pray. I turned to God and began to think about God and His love—that He is all-powerful and all presence, and that whatever I needed He could do for me. I began to remember that God is the only source of my life. Therefore, I couldn't lose my life. That was my main fear. But I saw that God is the source of my life, and from that I began to see that man is spiritual, not material. As a spiritual idea of God, man couldn't be hurt or damaged. This was a great encouragement to me. I could trust myself entirely to God.

Laurie: I'm going to interrupt here to say that she finally got out of the shed and that there were other people in the area, Christian Scientists, who helped her. She wasn't able to care for herself. She was hardly able to walk. At one point when she had an obligation to her mother that she felt she needed to fulfill, her friends were willing to travel with her to make sure she could get there. Yet she was still very weak.

Olga: Both her and her friends' efforts were to keep thought Godward, realizing God's presence, God's activity, God's absolute control. As the Bible says: "Thou wilt keep him in perfect peace, whose mind is stayed on thee."

Laurie: What would take away that peace would be not only a sense of having been hurried but also guilt. She has a few words to say about that.

Dorothy: My mother said something to me that was very important in the healing. She said, "You really must stop condemning yourself." She had noticed that I was condemning myself for my negligence. I kept saying, "What a foolish thing to do." She pointed out that negligence was no part of my true thinking as a reflection of the divine Mind, no part of my true identity as a child of God. That doesn't mean negligence shouldn't be avoided or faults shouldn't be corrected or sins shouldn't be abandoned. It simply means that, should we seem to express any sins, faults, or negligence, we can see that such tendencies are not really a part of our true selfhood. Therefore they can be put aside.

The words from several hymns were also very helpful to me. One was "In atmosphere of Love divine,/ We live, and move, and breathe." That seemed to fit so perfectly. As soon as I accepted this as the truth, I was healed.

That wasn't quite the end of the story. On the way home I began to realize I'd been allowing myself to be overbusy. I'd been pressured. I thought I had too many things to do. I decided that from that point on I would never allow hurry and pressure to govern my actions but that I would remember that the whole of my experience is governed by God.

Olga: I'm so glad that Dorothy brought up the point of self-condemnation. When we have been under pressure, it could be that we blame others around us; and then maybe we get past that and we say, "No, it isn't their fault." And then we turn on ourselves. "I shouldn't have done this. I was careless." It all turns inward. Self-condemnation is no better than condemnation of somebody else.

When we realize that God's Father-Mother love is tenderly holding us, tenderly carrying us through whatever experience, whatever needs to be done moment by moment, that does lift a tremendous weight off our shoulders.

Laurie: That's very freeing. It allows us to be and do and accomplish those things that glorify God.

This is the second of a two-part reprint. The first appeared May 20, 1991.

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