TeenConnect: Fact or Fiction? June 1, 2016

Don’t take it personally

Annette Dutenhoffer

Fiction: “If I’m having a problem, it’s my fault—the problem is me and my thinking.”

Fact: Once I was praying with a friend who was struggling with pain night after night. One night she said that she wondered what she must be thinking wrong to continue to be awakened by this problem. I affirmed, without a doubt, that man, as God’s child, is always innocent and that his purity protects him from evil in any form. What appeared to be so real in those wee hours was simply an impersonal claim that evil could be present. A phrase from Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures by Mary Baker Eddy came to mind: “… evil can have no place, where all space is filled with God” (p. 469). But I heard it this way: “Evil can have no hour where every hour is filled with God.” Understanding this fact proved to be the turning point and soon the problem ceased to occur.

It can be very tempting to think of problems as personal—as our fault or our thinking. After all, they do masquerade as our own thoughts and sound like our own voice. I think of them as “I,” “me,” or “my” messages. They go something like this: “I’m sick.” Or, “I won’t have any friends at my new school.” Or, “Everyone else is smarter than I am.”

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