Recently, Sentinel staff editor JENNY ROEMER spoke with ELLEN HAMMOND, MATT LAWRENCE, and LAURA FORBES—three employees (all in their 20s) who work at The First Church of Christ, Scientist, in Boston. They talked about handling stress in their lives.

Jenny Roemer: We're here today discussing how to handle pressure and stress through prayer. Let's start off by talking about where we're seeing stress and pressure crop up.

Laura Forbes: Especially being in our 20s, there are pressures out there about where we're supposed to be in our lives, and what success means. I think there's a lot of pressure on us these days to really have it all together. Society tells you that you should have a great place to live, a great career—and maybe be looking for a wife or husband, thinking about kids, and getting your finances in order. And that can sometimes seem overwhelming when you look at your life and think, Do I really have any of those things in the way the world says I should?

Matt Lawrence: That's really interesting, Laura, because I feel that same stress. But as someone who is young and married, I also feel a different kind of pressure from my peers—the pressure not to grow up, not to have kids, but to be young and go out every night and keep up with that lifestyle. It seems that people our age are caught in this middle zone—like, "Well, are we going to act 20 years old, or do we need to act 30?"

Ellen Hammond: Laura, I love what you said about this expectation that we should have everything in order. Maybe it's something that your friends have expressed to you. Maybe they're 25 and you're 25, and they are married and thinking about kids. And you're going, "Uh, I'm not ready for that yet!" Or your friends have this fast track to an awesome life, and yet you feel like you don't have your stuff together all the way.

Jenny: So when those thoughts and fears come and threaten to knock you off balance, is there a way to handle them prayerfully?

Matt: It starts off with your daily commute. I used to drive in to work, and I'd flip around on the morning radio talk shows. I found myself becoming increasingly stressed in traffic. It wasn't a good way to start the day. So I actually started listening to the Christian Science Bible Lesson on CD each week. Now when I'm driving in to work, I have all this good stuff being read to me from the Bible and from Science and Health. And even if I can't listen to it word for word each time, I'm getting so many inspiring ideas. It's really become helpful in starting my day off on the right level. That way I'm not already up too high on the stress meter when I get to work.

Ellen: Sometimes I can be super critical of myself. I have to step back. And I have to get quiet, mentally. You have all these things, this stress, screaming around in your head. I have to get still and take things moment by moment. And I listen to hear what God is telling me in that moment, instead of feeling like I'm being weighed down by the world. I ask, "What is God informing me about myself and about those around me?"

Laura: For me, what's so important is that moment when you realize that those expectations being heaped on you by the world are not what God expects of you. God doesn't care what job you have, what car you drive, where you live, whether you're single, married, or dating someone. God wants you to be the person—the child—that He created, and to express qualities of love, dominion, and intelligence. All I have to do is just be—just be what God created. And then the rest will come.

Matt: Laura, you really like hit the nail right on the head. You focus on that one thing, and realize every morning that you just have one thing to do that day—express God. Then, when you're going down different paths and making decisions, you're going to find you have different opportunities to express God.

Ellen: I almost get to a standstill sometimes trying to figure out what to do next. I just love the idea that you can let God prioritize your life for you.

Jenny: Something that I often think about is the 23rd Psalm in the Bible. God "leads us beside the still waters" and He "restores our soul," and in those moments when we feel like we just can't seem to get still, or we don't know what to do next, it's helpful to pause and let God lead us beside those still waters. To let our soul be restored by just feeling His presence.

Laura: One experience that I've had in terms of feeling a lot of stress involved deciding which college to go to. There was this pressure of "Oh my goodness, this choice is going to affect the rest of my life." One day, in tears, I met with a Christian Science practitioner, and I asked, "What if I make the wrong decision? What if I discover during freshman year at college that I'm in my wrong place?" She said, "Laura, you are never in your wrong place." And it was like this weight lifted, because all of a sudden I realized it was not my decision to make. God was working out His purpose for me. God had a plan for me. Right then and there, I knew that wherever I ended up, it would be my right place.

I just loved that sense of God's dominion, and that the right choice is whatever God's good will for you is. I have used that spiritual idea numerous times ever since that experience. I always get that quiet sense of calm, and I hear those words in my head: "Laura, you are never in your wrong place."

Matt: It's interesting how so often, you think a decision you need to make is going to be either all right or all wrong. But when you get into your 20s, and you're coming out of being a teenager when you're so wrapped up in your own little world, you start to realize that the world's a big place, and things aren't always black and white. Now all of a sudden, you get opportunities to go to different colleges. You get opportunities to meet different people, to go different places. And sometimes none of it is black and white, yes or no, wrong or right. It's great opportunity A, great opportunity B, great opportunity C. And sometimes in those cases, I've experienced the most stress. How do I pick?

Jenny: Pressure to make a decision when there are too many choices ...

Matt: ... exactly. And how do you know what you need? Sometimes you have no idea what God has in store for you. But you read about people in the Bible dealing with decisions and pressures—starting with the Old Testament, all the way through the New Testament. And it comes back to having faith in God and just being "about my Father's business," like Jesus was, each day (Luke 2:49). It's just reflecting God to the best of your ability, no matter what capacity or role you're fulfilling at that moment.

Jenny: Speaking of needs, there's a quote in Science and Health that really speaks to everything we're talking about here: "What we most need is the prayer of fervent desire for growth in grace, expressed in patience, meekness, love, and good deeds" (p. 4). It's comforting to know that that's what we most need—the "fervent desire for growth in grace."

Laura: Matt, you were talking about faith and being led by God, and it reminds me of this little quip that someone shared with me: Worry is ingratitude in advance. I'm sure we've probably all heard that, but I remind myself of that all the time. If we worry, it's like saying to God, "You're not doing Your job." It really is all about having that trust and faith.

Ellen: Recently, a family member called and asked me for help through prayer—Christian Science treatment. And although I'd had Christian Science class instruction, I felt overwhelmed a little bit. But then I thought, "OK, God, this is Your child. You're going to show me what to pray about and how to treat this situation because You made everything good, and that's number one." I thought about the story of creation in the first chapter of Genesis. And how God "saw every thing that he had made, and, behold, it was very good" (1:31). Then I thought, "OK, I'm not reinventing the wheel. I'm just acknowledging what God has already created—His perfect son and daughter, His perfect creation."

I was grateful for that opportunity to pray, and the fear of messing up or not praying about the right thing dropped away. I was able to talk to the family member the next day, and their physical problem wasn't there anymore, and some friendship issues they had were resolved as well. And I thought, "The practice of Christian Science is not personal. It's not based on something I feel like I can or can't do."

Matt: Sometimes, I've felt a lot of pressure to fit in with my friends because I'm the only married one in the group. They kind of say jokingly, "Oh, you're the old married guy now. You can't go out anymore." To tell you the truth, it was frustrating, and I didn't pray about it for a while. The stress kind of festered, and I noticed that my respect for my friends was deteriorating.

One evening I came home to my wife, and I just blew up and let all my frustrations out. And she just looks right at me, and says, "What would Jesus do?" I thought, "Come on! 'What would Jesus do?'" I didn't want that answer right then! I wanted to hear that I was right. She just let me know, after my big tirade, that I could express more love. She said, "You know, Matt, if your friends aren't loving you enough, you need to love them more."

I like that the Bible simply says, "God is love" (I John 4:8). And Love is one of the synonyms for God in Science and Health. Almost immediately after my wife and I talked, all the anger and frustration left me, much quicker than it came. It was just an instantaneous feeling of calm, and I was at peace. And when I started loving more, all of a sudden, my friendships that had been deteriorating improved. The tension, pressure, and conflicts were gone. So love can be the ultimate remedy for stress. CSS