She went on to say her son had finally gone blind but like me, he didn’t give up. He sold his business, got a Seeing Eye dog, learned braille and was attending law school. I gave her a big hug and asked her to give my congratulations and love to her son. She agreed and we parted from our brief time together in a sense of joy about life itself.
That night in my workshop I told a story about my older brother, Gerry, who contacted diabetes when he was five years old in 1947 and how ‘those in the know’ had told my mother what the physiology of diabetes would mean to him. He would probably not live into his teens and if he did he would have - - - and they gave the list of physical problems he would probably experience. And I give them the benefit of the doubt by using the word ‘probably.’
At the time of the workshop my brother had turned sixty-three and just gone through a triple bypass. I was with him the morning of the surgery. When the surgeon came in to talk with him he mentioned that after reading Gerry’s chart he was sure they wouldn’t be able to use the veins in Gerry’s legs for the bypass because he had been a diabetic for fifty-five years and as a Doctor, he knew the physiology of diabetes. Under his breath I heard my big brother say, “Don’t bet on it.”
To make a long story short, the doctors did use the veins from Gerry’s leg and commented later that they were like the veins of a healthy forty-five year old and he got out of the hospital a day earlier that most others. Now he’s back doing his real estate part time, playing golf and traveling in his motor home with his wife and dog.
In the workshop I stressed that Gerry had been affirming his health and vitality for as long as I could remember. He had always affirmed, “I am going to be perfectly health till I am fifty years old.” He changed that to eighty-five years old on his forty-seventh birthday.
The point is, what are you affirming in your life? The church was a Science of Mind Center so I had quoted Ernest Holmes where in “Living the Science of Mind” page 212 he states, “There is nothing too great and nothing too small, whatever the need is we should seek to meet it through specializing the Law.” And page 210 where he writes, “The Law, having not purpose of Its own, having no intention of Its own about us, is compelled to take the color of our dominant thought and create after that pattern. We being persons can change our thought and thereby remold our conditions. Indeed this is the great realization of freedom, and to understand this is to understand how we may be released from bondage.”
After the workshop the woman I had met at church that morning came up to me and said she’d like to talk with me. I gave her a big hug and said, “Sure, what would you like to talk about?” She said, “All the time my son has had diabetes I have been praying and treating for God’s Divine right action, God’s perfect plan. All the time your brother has had diabetes he has been praying and treating for perfect health. I’m wondering if it would have made a difference if we had been doing our work for perfect health instead of God’s plan.” She went on to say that she had been taught not to be overly specific in her prayer and treatment work. I told her I would be happy to explore that with her and gave her my phone number. She never called.
What are you praying for?
In New Thought there are many different paths. Many different beliefs about how we should use these great spiritual principles we teach and some of these differences center around what we should want and what we should be praying for. I think these differences can and do make a huge difference in the quality of our human existence. And since every belief can be validated, for me, it’s simply a matter of choice. Therefore I continue to review within myself, “What do I believe and do my current beliefs still serve me?”
It’s not important what I think about that woman’s question. The real question is: What do you think, what do you believe? Do your current beliefs support you in having the life you desire? And perhaps most importantly, do you have the right and the authority to change your beliefs? Can you make your life up differently? Or are your current beliefs just the way it is?
It’s one of those things I get questioned about frequently. “How free are we, do we get to choose our own path on the way Home? Or do we need to accept the things that can not be changed, like the physiology of diabetes?