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January-March, 2009

The Gifts of the Spirit

by Rev. Barbara Eberle

I can’t count all of the gifts Holy Spirit has brought my way. Yet, this morning, as I speak with my daughter on the phone and experience the exercises of Lesson 4 with her, I feel Spirit’s joy well up inside of me. 

I found the Course over 20 years ago. I sat it on my bookshelf. I would take it out on occasion, do the lessons for a day or two, and then place it back on the shelf. Sometimes it remained there for years. Sometimes it remained there for only a day or so before I began the lessons again. Still, the authority of the Course changed me, gently. It gave me sight where I had been blind. 

Twenty years ago I tried to do it all. I tried to be the wife of a corporate executive and live up to the role that model called for; raise my kids according to society’s expectations; live according to my parent’s views and most of all, victimize myself in ways that only the worst abuser could think of. Finally, I had to stop. I was so depressed I couldn’t function. At that time, I didn’t know there was another way to live my life. I didn’t know that “ego” was hijacking me. I didn’t even know what the “ego” was. And then came the Course. 

My depression began to leave. I began to be less concerned with what other people thought of me. I began to feel at peace. I began to hear my children’s laughter rather than their whining. I began to have compassion for individuals I used to gossip about. I began to feel “love.”

And now, my grown daughter meets the Course at the exact same age as I was when it first found me. Now, she is the corporate executive. Now, she is raising two energetic boys, and now, she is trying to find peace. 

What is miraculous about this situation is that I never mentioned the Course to my daughter. Oh, I’m sure she has seen it lie around my house and has wondered about it, but I never preached the Course to her. Yet, the Course has found her.  And, she has asked me if we can begin our day, together, over the phone, with the daily lessons.

What a gift the Holy Spirit has brought to me and to my daughter. What a way to start our day. Still, as taught in Lesson 4, “These thoughts about my daughter do not mean anything.” While my thoughts are “good” they do not represent my real thoughts, which, according to the Course “...are covered up by them. The ‘good’ ones are but shadows of what lies beyond, and shadows make sight impossible.” 

And so, I give these thoughts to the Holy Spirit and ask that He do with them what He will. And, I experience the peace that only His love can give.

© 2009, Pathways of Light. https://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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