ON A CRISP OCTOBER DAY a few golden leaves fluttered off the trees, but my spirits seemed to hit the ground before the leaves did. I was sitting on my porch, ruminating. It was what might be called a "new chapter" in our household—my daughter's senior year in high school was just beginning, the college application process loomed, and there were lots of questions about what lay ahead. For the last few days I'd felt unsettled, wandering down the "what if" road: What if she doesn't get into the college of her choice? What if I can't afford it? Once she leaves home, will she ever want to come back? And—just to give a grand, dramatic flourish to all of it: Will I live long enough to see her embark on her adult life?
Seemingly from out of nowhere, a word sliced into thought: maudlin! I stopped in my mental tracks. These thoughts are just maudlin—that's what they are!
I realize that the wobbly "what if" road isn't unique to me—from time to time (and maybe more often) we all find that a disturbing thought comes ... it feeds into another one ... and another, and before we know it those "pearls of peril" have been strung onto an entire necklace of negativity. But on this day, because the reprimand maudlin! came so sharply, I took it as an opportunity to wake up. As a student of Christian Science, I knew that this shaky reach into the future wasn't God's doing. Mary Baker Eddy stated in Science and Health: "... clearer, higher views inspire the Godlike man to reach the absolute centre and circumference of his being" (p. 262). What a message—that our reach isn't outward, but inward—toward Soul, God.
