Article September 6, 2010 Issue

GOODBYE TO STRESS

God brings this PhD candidate tranquillity and the needed strength to be victorious.

BY REGINA CELY DE CAMPOS HAGEMEYER

Prayer and trust in God can bring harmony even to the most stressful situations. I proved this some years ago.

I live in Curitiba, in the south of Brazil, but I wanted to get my PhD in São Paulo. However, I felt insecure because the universities of that state have a very competitive selection process. To keep calm, I decided to contact a Christian Science practitioner so that she would pray with me.

The practitioner asked me to look at the following passage from Science and Health: "Spirit, God, gathers unformed thoughts into their proper channels, and unfolds these thoughts, even as He opens the petals of a holy purpose in order that the purpose may appear" (p. 506). As I read that passage, I realized that I had not been thinking correctly about the dissertation I intended to develop during my doctoral program. Instead of seeing that step as a burden, I tried to acknowledge that the purpose of my dissertation was good and holy because it had the potential of helping many people connected to public education in Brazil. I held on to the thought that the good generated by this project could not be stopped or disapproved of.

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