Article April 6, 2009 Issue

NEW PLACE, SAME GOOD

BY MELANIE D'EVELYN

AFTER graduating from college, I purchased a one-way ticket to Washington, DC. I'd studied political science and was interested in exploring career opportunities in the nation's capital.

But when I stepped off the plane at Dulles Airport, I felt unsettled at the prospect of building a new life. I'd left behind a community of friends and college professors I loved, to move to an unfamiliar city. For the next few months, I planned to sleep on a friend's couch and begin my job search.

Though I had a place to stay and some vague notion of what I wanted to do, I found the transition to be abrupt. I questioned my decision to move to a place where I had no family, hardly any friends, and no job, and struggled initially to get rid of the feeling that I couldn't recover the good in my life that I'd given up. But I began to discover that being stripped of things dear to me forced me to go higher in my spiritual understanding. I drew inspiration from a passage in Science and Health, which observes that "... severance of fleshly ties serves to unite thought more closely to God, for Love supports the struggling heart until it ceases to sigh over the world and begins to unfold its wings for heaven" (p. 57). To me, letting go of those "fleshly ties" meant trusting that the future was full of possibility because God was the source of good in my life. Being in this new city caused me to lean on God, who is divine Love, as I never had before.