RELATIONSHIPS May 25, 2009 Issue

FREED FROM BEING SHY

MELISSA HAYDEN

WE'D SUNG TOGETHER and sat next to each other at a couple of our community chorus rehearsals in the previous season. I thought we were starting to develop a good rapport. But with the new season beginning again, my neighbor acted as if she didn't know me. This seemed to be a familiar occurrence for me. Just as I'd begin to get to know someone, they'd seem no longer to be interested. What was wrong with me?

Although I'd asked that question of myself repeatedly over the years, I was determined to look at things differently this time. Before, my answers might range from "I'm not interesting enough" to "That's just the way it is." But I was learning that this line of reasoning was pretty self-centered. It focused exclusively on me and my travails. It not only left God out of the equation, but everyone else, too. In Science and Health, Mary Baker Eddy addressed this point of view head-on when she wrote, "Absorbed in material selfhood we discern and reflect but faintly the substance of Life or Mind" (p. 91).

As I considered this sentence, I began to discover that my prayers, which had been along the lines of "Dear God, please make so and so like me," or "Help me not care," were actually agreeing with my plight rather than striving to heal it. Instead of discerning how great was the "substance of Life or Mind," I was seeing only my own smallness. This kind of praying tended to perpetuate the problem rather than solve it. And I truly wanted to end what might be called an inferiority complex.

Send a comment to the editors

NEXT IN THIS ISSUE

SENTINEL WATCH

DIVINE LIGHT OUTSHINES SWINE FLU