When I was young, Mrs. Eddy's words "I will follow and rejoice/All the rugged way"Poems, p. 14. were disturbing to me. I recall wishing she had said all the beautiful way—or the royal or heavenly way. Now, after many lessons learned when the way appeared rugged, I am deeply grateful to realize we can rejoice during difficult times. In striving to rejoice I have had to become conscious of, and grateful for, God's presence and the presence of the living goodness that expresses Him. Rejoicing in spiritual realities leads to resurrection from belief in sin or suffering. Mortal belief alone makes the way rough or rugged.
Hardly anyone chooses to suffer. On the other hand, some feel they have no lessons to learn. But most of us would acknowledge that suffering often impels us to relinquish or abandon a false sense of our own or another's selfhood. Mrs. Eddy observes, "Self-sacrifice is the highway to heaven."No and Yes, p. 33. If we are uncomfortable in mortality—uncomfortable with the mortal, material, and personal—we are more ready, perhaps even eager, to be roused from illusion. We would happily awake to find we are on the "highway to heaven," claiming our true selfhood, our Godlikeness.
When our way is smooth, we may tend to be comfortable in mortality and make only spasmodic efforts at self-sacrifice— that is, at rejecting association with mortality and at identifying with immortal good. However, when the way is rough and we are disturbed by an erroneous sense of identity, we want to be free of mortality's limitations and victimization—the cross the world has given us. At such times it is good to remind ourselves that through prayer and regeneration the cross will be exchanged for the glory of victory over error and eventual ascension above all that would deny God's infinite goodness. Mrs. Eddy assures us: "The cross is the central emblem of history. It is the lodestar in the demonstration of Christian healing,—the demonstration by which sin and sickness are destroyed."Science and Health, pp. 238-239.
