Article September 19, 1994 Issue

The blessings of obedience

Mary Lee S. O'Neal

When my children were young, I had to act as both father and mother to them, because my husband was in the military and absent from home a great deal. When disciplinary problems arose they had to be dealt with immediately, and I was the only one to do it. I became disturbed when one of the children began to challenge everything I said. Arguments took place that amounted to battles of wills. I knew there had to be a better way to deal with this lack of obedience.

Spiritual enlightenment and direction were necessary, not human contention. I needed a better understanding of God as the one true Parent, and of who I really was. Instead of thinking of myself as a struggling mortal responsible for the behavior of other small mortals, I wanted to see myself more as God knew me. I realized that to Him I was not a frustrated mother but a harmonious and peaceful spiritual idea. My children and I were actually the offspring of the same loving Parent, and He was responsible for all of us. "Father-Mother is the name for Deity, which indicates His tender relationship to His spiritual creation," Mary Baker Eddy tells us in the Christian Science textbook, Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures (p. 332). I realized our wise Father-Mother was imparting to me exactly what I needed to know. I understood that as His expression I included the gentleness and tenderness that show forth the motherhood of God, as well as the strength and wisdom of His fatherhood.

I found these words in the Bible: "The wisdom that is from above is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, and easy to be entreated, full of mercy and good fruits, without partiality, and without hypocrisy" (James 3:17). This really made me think. I knew I did not love one child more than another. Would a mother love a child covered with mud any less than the child who was clean? There could be no partial love, only impartial love, reflecting divine Love. I realized that the true selfhood of each child was intact and loved impartially and unceasingly by God and that I expressed His love. I saw too that I could express that gentle, peaceable wisdom that was easy to be entreated.

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