I HAVE DONE MANY THINGS I'M NOT PROUD OF. But the lessons I've learned from my trespasses have become priceless to me. Step by step, I've learned to forgive those who I felt had wronged me, and—most of all—to forgive myself.
Self-forgiveness may seem self-serving, but it's one of the most selfless acts there is. It means doing as Jesus instructed: "First cast out the beam out of thine own eye; and then shalt thou see clearly to cast out the mote out of thy brother's eye." Matt. 7:5. In other words, be willing to work on our own faults, so we see clearly enough to help others overcome theirs. But it's difficult to see things clearly when you have so much anger, as I did.
After my father died during my last year of high school, I became a different person—not only angry, but selfish. I thought family and friends had somehow let me down when I needed them most, and I started telling lies, stealing from my mother's purse, and drinking excessively. Yet, I covered it up, making all kinds of excuses for myself.
During my "lost" days, as I call them, I managed to lose my first job of almost three years and my second job in no time at all. I became an alcoholic, abusing myself physically and mentally. The result, aside from imposing a great distance between me and those who loved me, was a jail cell, where I spent a night for writing a bad check. That was when I knew for sure my life had to change. I had reached bottom. I was so tired. So tired of being tired. And I couldn't take the weight of what I'd done.
I had searched for someone who could tell me how to get out of this mental dungeon. But no one had been able to help. Finally, I realized no one could do it for me. Much later, I came across this passage in Science and Health: "Who will stop the practice of sin so long as he believes in the pleasures of sin? When mortals once admit that evil confers no pleasure, they turn from it." Science and Health, pp. 39-40. And that's what I did—I turned away from the evil in my life.
After my release from jail, I began to recognize my sinful behavior and saw that it brought only misery. It was a time of repentance. A time to rethink who I was. Let me take you through this wonderful journey.
I had never really understood God or acknowledged His presence. Yet I had been taught in the Christian Science Sunday School, and through many incidences from an early age, that God loved me. He always will and always has, and I had never lost the ability to recognize this, no matter what I was going through or what I had done. This unconditional love I felt from my Father-Mother God gave me comfort when the past seemed to overwhelm me. I began to drink in this Love, feeling the absolute assurance that this was the genuine thing and that it would never let me down.
One great blessing was the support and prayer of a Christian Science practitioner I reached out to. I talked to God all the time, and I knew God loved me, but the practitioner actually showed me this love. He would look me directly in the eye and smile when I told him the worst things I had done. I was so afraid of being judged or condemned, but the practitioner knew that the things I had done weren't the real me. He saw only divine Love's child: the innocent, unselfish, loving child that God made me to be.
Nevertheless, I couldn't seem to let go of my burden quickly enough.
I prayed and prayed, until I realized that my prayers were wobbly. No matter how I prayed, they didn't feel wholly sincere. So I wobbled until it came to me that I was asking for the ability to forgive those who had played a part in my downfall, but I was excluding myself from the part I had played.
I was so afraid of being judged or condemned, but the practitioner knew that the things I had done weren't the real me.
When I understood how selfish and dishonest I had been, I was flooded with shame and guilt. When these feelings bombarded me, I would open my Bible or Science and Health or a Christian Science Sentinel. These publications were my lifeline. As I read them, I was so comforted to see what God had done for others, and their messages reassured me that He loved me just as much.
My burden began to lift little by little.
I found that I was able to begin forgiving those who had wronged me. Jesus was my example. I realized that if I were honestly going to have one God and worship Him, as Jesus did, then to hold anger in my heart would be treating that anger as a god. And so I let it go. But it was not so easy to forgive myself for the hurt I had inflicted on others.
Then one day I thought about the story in the Bible of the angry crowd who took out their anger on a woman who had been caught committing adultery. See John 8:3-11 . Armed with stones to pelt her to death, they brought her to the temple. Jesus was there, and they tempted him to speak in favor of the woman so that they could accuse him of disobeying Moses' law against adultery. Jesus instead turned from the crowd and began to write on the ground. Some time later, after the crowd badgered him for an answer, Jesus dared them, saying, "He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone at her." No stone was lifted against the woman, and the crowd dispersed one by one.
It dawned on me that Jesus could have included the woman, too, in that dare. What she must have been feeling: shame, guilt, fear, loneliness, condemnation! Many of the same things I was.
But I realized I had a choice: Do I cast stones at myself—stones of self-pity, self-loathing, shame, anger, frustration, and embarrassment—and beat myself up over and over hoping that one day it will be enough? Or do I stop the sinful behavior?
The Bible says that Jesus then told the accused woman, "Go, and sin no more." This was a very interesting concept to me because I knew what I wasn't going to do anymore. But I wasn't sure what I was going to do. Yet this demand to "sin no more" was kind of a challenge to me. I had been so selfish, even though I had examples all around me of unselfishness. My mom was the most unselfish person I knew. The fact that she could forgive me for everything I had done to her really helped me. And I felt so much love from the members of the Christian Science church I was attending. I knew that all I needed to do was accept the love everyone was showing me. To let people give me a hug, for example, and stop shutting them out and running away. In other words, to quit thinking so much about myself! That was unselfishness, I realized.
I still do not understand why I went to such extremes of behavior, but I've realized that it doesn't matter. I did not have to dig into the past and try to understand a lie about myself, about why I had been a thief. But I did have to recognize that this was untrue because it was not what God knew about me.
The Bible says, "All things were made by him; and without him was not anything made that was made." John 1:3. And Mary Baker Eddy gives this definition of God in Science and Health: "God. The great I am; the all-knowing, all-seeing, all-acting, all-wise, all-loving, and eternal; Principle; Mind; Soul; Spirit; Life; Truth; Love; all substance; intelligence." Science and Health, p. 587.
I was flooded with joy when I began to realize the allness of God and to understand that it was a lie that suggested I was separate from God and not entitled to His all-loving and all-wise intelligence.
The Bible explains creation this way: "God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them. ... And God saw every thing that he had made, and, behold, it was very good." Gen. 1:27, 31.
Every day I claim this goodness as my identity. I pray to see what God sees in me, knowing that God is Spirit and that I am His spiritual reflection; therefore, we are inseparable. Although drinking, stealing, and other destructive behavior no longer call me, I pray to deny the ungodlike thoughts that sometimes try to hold me back.
I do not do this work alone; God is with me every step of the way. You see, He is taking me on the most beautiful sight-seeing trip of the spiritual senses. All I have to do is open my eyes to this one and only power.
To finally know where I'm going and what I'm about is wonderful!
