Miracles News

May-August, 2026

The Peace of Not Knowing

by Rev. Stella Berthelette, Ordained Ministerial Counselor

Sometimes peace returns in the most unexpected way — through a single sentence remembered at exactly the right moment.

This past year asked a great deal of me. My life seemed to rearrange itself all at once — moving, renovations, changes in my partnership, and a professional workload that brought an enormous amount of trauma into my office each day. It felt as though everything accelerated simultaneously, like standing where several currents meet. Somewhere in the midst of it all, anxiety quietly returned.

When the mind feels overwhelmed it tries to take control, and mine was no different. It began organizing the future, evaluating my path, and trying to determine what should happen next. I found myself thinking more and more about the direction of my work and the gifts people often see in me. For more than twenty-five years I have shown up for others, holding space for their healing and their stories, yet another thought had begun to surface quietly beneath the surface of that work.

I am getting older — or so the body would suggest. And with that simple thought the mind began measuring time, as though the gifts of God could ever be limited by it.

It is remarkable how much noise the mind can gather around such a simple realization. Questions began circling: How long am I meant to continue doing this work in the way I have been doing it? Is there another expression of these gifts waiting to emerge? I feel drawn toward coaching and teaching through the principles of A Course in Miracles, yet the form of that calling still feels undefined. When the mind does not know the future, it often fills the space with worry.

Throughout this year, however, one quiet habit continued to guide me. In my personal life I have learned to take A Course in Miracles quite literally. When a passage appears, I listen. When guidance arises, I follow it. Time and again that simple trust has proven dependable.

One morning, feeling particularly tired and uncertain, I opened the Manual for Teachers and found myself reading Section 6: “Is Healing Certain?” The opening line felt like a bell sounding through the noise of my thinking: “Healing is always certain.” (M-6.1:1)

Something in my mind softened immediately. The Course was reminding me that healing does not depend on my ability to manage life or anticipate the future. As I continued reading, another sentence seemed to rise quietly from the page: “It is not the function of God’s teachers to evaluate the outcome of their gifts. It is merely their function to give them.” (M-6.3:1–2)

In that moment I could see clearly what had been happening in my mind. My anxiety had not come from the work itself, nor from the changes unfolding around me. It had come from trying to determine what my gifts were for — trying to measure their outcomes, decide where they should lead, and when they should take a different form. But the Course quietly removes that burden. Our function is simply to give the gifts we have been given. The rest is not ours to determine.

Further down the page another passage settled into my mind like still water: “How can it be lost? How can it be ineffectual? How can it be wasted? God’s treasure house can never be empty.” (M-6.4:5–8)

If nothing given in Love is ever lost, then none of our offerings are wasted — not the years spent listening, not the quiet compassion extended to another, not the simple willingness to show up and allow healing to unfold. All of it rests safely in God’s storehouse.

Reading this, something inside me softened in a way I had not expected. The pressure I had been carrying about the future — about age, about direction, about what my work should become — began to loosen. I do not know what any of this is for. I do not know how these gifts will evolve, or when their form may change.

But I do know this: Healing is certain.

The outcome itself was never uncertain. What had been uncertain was only my willingness to trust that the outcome already rests in God. And in that moment the mind grows quiet.

“What concern, then, can a teacher of God have about what becomes of his gifts?” (M-6.4:11)

Nothing given in God can be lost. Nothing offered in Love can be wasted. The outcome was never uncertain.

Healing is certain. The gifts have already been received where they were truly given. And so the mind no longer tries to determine the future. It rests instead in the strength of God — and in the deep peace of not needing to know.

Rev. Stella Berthelette, OMC, is a Pathways of Light minister living in Calgary, Alberta, Canada. .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)

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