Overcoming limitations

Recently I felt deeply touched and inspired by the movie, The King’s Speech. As a former special educator, I was especially moved by the loving and patient approach employed by Lionel Logue as he helped King George VI overcome a speech impediment.

Through my study and practice of Christian Science, I am learning and demonstrating that everyone has the God-given potential to succeed in the work assigned to them by God. Now as a Christian Science practitioner, I help individuals listen for the still, small voice within them. This voice, the voice of God, is an unerring “GPS” that tells people who they truly are and what they should be doing moment by moment. When helping others discern God’s voice, I listen to what individuals are telling me and then listen for God’s guidance myself. I pray to be led to pray effectively and to say what will help others to understand and feel their relationships to God. God gently and consistently leads us, but mortal mind badgers, bullies, and tries to push us into a zigzag course. Often I’ll assure a patient that he or she can find the courage and strength from God to unwaveringly follow God’s leadings.

A starting point for my work is, “Jesus beheld in Science the perfect man, who appeared to him where sinning mortal man appears to mortals. In this perfect man the Saviour saw God’s own likeness, and this correct view of man healed the sick” (Science and Health, pp. 476-477 ). I have learned that mortal perception may present a picture of limitation, but spiritual discernment sees beyond the material picture to the underlying spiritual reality.

This rejection of material assumptions and the understanding of spiritual reality brings forth healing. I have also learned the importance of not reacting with fear or anger because reacting is actually making a reality of the challenge. If I feel discouraged about a situation, I come back in thought to spiritual reality: the perfection of God and man. This shift in thought places me on the bedrock of Truth that I have demonstrated many times. No matter how dire a situation appears, it can be healed! This understanding has enabled me to help individuals find freedom from the false beliefs that have bound them.

Here’s one example of how I’ve put these ideas into practice. When I worked in special education, there was a student in my class for adolescents labeled “emotionally disturbed.” He was the younger brother of a very capable, yet overbearing, older brother. This student constantly compared himself to his brother and always came up short in his opinion. His expression of his low self-esteem was to act out, disrupting his classes and doing very poorly in his schoolwork. When I first talked with this boy, I saw a great deal of potential in him. He was very bright and, most important, willing to change. My heart went out to him.

One of the things that became very apparent to me early on was that he revered his extremely competent older brother and felt that he was unable to compete with him. He seemed to reason that if he couldn’t be as good as his brother, he may as well not try to be good at all. I prayed to recognize and appreciate this student’s own unique, special spiritual identity and, in turn, found ways to help him focus on developing his own wonderful talents without comparison to his brother’s.

As this student began to acknowledge his own specialness and ability, he began to try to achieve academically. His successes fueled his enthusiasm for school, and he eventually exited my program. When he graduated from high school, he had almost a 4.0 grade point average and was accepted at one of the top universities in California. He graduated from that university and received advanced degrees from two other prestigious universities. Of course, I’m sure there were many factors that contributed to his success. But I feel certain that the prayer I devoted to my classroom had a beneficial effect.

What I have seen in my work as a special educator and Christian Science practitioner is that individuals accept many false concepts about themselves. Like the boy in the example above, they believe and embody the negative, limited opinions of themselves and others. I find that some people calling for help through prayer don’t like themselves very much. They think they are worthless or inept and stubbornly hold to this concept. In the highest sense of Christianity, letting go of the “poor miserable sinner” concept is what being “born again” is all about. As we are “born into” or actually awake to the true concept of our spiritual natures as the perfect children of God, we can let go of false mortal concepts about our identities.

Through our upbringing or our experiences in the world, we may have come to believe that we aren’t valuable or capable, or we used to be but are no longer valuable or capable. This is a lie about our true spiritual nature. We always have been, are, and always will be God’s precious spiritual ideas. God loves us. He cares for us. He wants us. He knows we are wonderful because He made us that way. He is always saying, “This is My beloved child in whom I am well pleased.” Mary Baker Eddy says in her Message to The Mother Church for 1902: “Happiness consists in being and in doing good; only what God gives, and what we give ourselves and others through His tenure, confers happiness: conscious worth satisfies the hungry heart, and nothing else can” (p. 17 ).

Jesus is an unparalleled example of an individual who knew and valued who he was, and he is the Way-shower in revealing to us who we really are. As we examine and strive to emulate Jesus’ words and works, we will discover many facets of our true identity. Like Jesus, we are created in the image and likeness of God, and we each have a unique God-ordained mission and purpose. We don’t have to create, invent, or reinvent ourselves. God, the source of our being, is revealing our identities to us moment by moment.

Jesus showed us how to succeed despite our own or others’ limited concepts of us. He wasn’t accepted as the Messiah in certain places (like Nazareth) perhaps because the people in those locales weren’t able to see beyond their material concept of Jesus to recognize the Christ, his true spiritual nature. They may have had a concept of Jesus the carpenter locked in time and space rather than recognizing the timeless Christ. Perhaps they looked at Jesus and thought, “Remember when Jesus was working with Joseph on that house over near the olive grove?” They may have recognized Jesus’ physical actions, his physical demeanor, and his station in life as a carpenter, instead of his holy mission.

Despite the fact that others denied his role, Jesus knew who he was. He knew that he expressed the Christ, his true spiritual nature, which was limitless. His spiritual concept of himself enabled him to transcend his humble mortal history and to fulfill his God-given mission.

We need to follow Jesus’ example and have a bigger, more Christly concept of ourselves. We need to let go of our mortal concepts of our material history and embrace our true spiritual natures. Mary Baker Eddy says in Science and Health: “The true theory of the universe, including man, is not in material history but in spiritual development” (p. 547 ).

We are not what others think we are or even what we think we are. We are God’s limitless concept of us, and God is revealing to us moment by moment who we are and what we should do. Our job is to learn who we are as God’s precious ideas and to express our true spiritual natures. This spiritual understanding has helped me grow, and it has enabled me to help others see they are capable of fulfilling their glorious, God-given potential.