Article September 7, 1998 Issue

HOW I WAS LED TO EXUBERANT LIFE

Trudy C. Palmer

Several years ago I needed to choose between two offers of employment. One included significant potential for professional development; the other allowed me to do community service but wasn't as conducive to advancement in the profession. After praying, I felt that I should accept the offer involving community service.

Then, after notifying both employers of my decision, I began to learn more about the position I had accepted. The more I learned, the more I knew that I had made the wrong decision. My heart sank. Yet I couldn't see any way to rectify the problem, so I told myself that I would simply have to make the best of a bad situation. And I started trying to imagine how I could make this arrangement work.

As I did so, however, I had an overwhelming feeling that I was accepting a kind of death. Even though I wasn't in any physical danger, this foreboding feeling stopped me in my tracks. I knew I had to fight it as vigorously as I would a physical threat. My response reminds me of this urging from Science and Health: "Rise in the strength of Spirit to resist all that is unlike good. God has made man capable of this, and nothing can vitiate the ability and power divinely bestowed on man" (p. 393).

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