Coming Home to God

Jessica

by Jessica Ledbetter

I woke up on a Tuesday in January and felt old. It was my twenty-third birthday, and I’d been dreading it for weeks. No longer was I a teenager, testing out the waters of adulthood. No longer was I a college student, still new to the real world. I was a full-fledged adult, with bills and responsibilities like everyone else. But instead of being content with where I was and where my life was going, I felt like I was lagging behind, that I wasn’t up to scratch.

Every day, it seems, we are bombarded by news of the success of young men and women, sixteen through twenty, who are making it big on television shows and in movies. Perfect in every way that Hollywood deems important, these men and women become overnight celebrities, idols to millions who wish to look just like them, act just like them, in essence, become them. Every day magazines and newspapers tell us how we should look, what clothes we should wear, what careers will make us the envy of all our friends, how we should spend our free time.

We all know the pitfalls of being taken in by the media, and we all know to be cautious of what we believe, right?

But what if your defenses are down, even for the briefest of moments? What if just once you let yourself believe that new shampoo or eye shadow will make you a different, more successful, person? What if you let the story of some young Hollywood starlet get you down because they seem to have accomplished so much and you so little? And what happens when it doesn’t stop there and that one little misstep turns into a freefall of self-doubt?

That’s what happened to me. Fresh out of college, I’d dreamed of glories and riches and fame—and nothing any of my family or friends said made a difference. I packed up and moved from my home state of Colorado to the golden city of Los Angeles. I was certain that I would be different from the millions of others who’d done exactly the same thing and failed. I would succeed.

What I hadn’t been prepared for was the constant stream of passive-aggressive criticism that bombarded me from all sides at all times of the day. In Colorado, I’d had a stable network of friends and family and a strong church community. It had been easier to turn off the TV and remember my true identity. But Los Angeles was a new world, and one that I wasn’t at all prepared for.

With nothing and no one to fall back on, I found myself becoming increasingly obsessed with my faults, not only physically but personally, as well. I allowed that little voice of error to creep in and dominate my mind. I’ll never be famous, it said, I’ll never be pretty enough or skinny enough. I’m too weak and useless, it told me after my many failed interviews. No one will ever want to hire me. I don’t have the right connections to succeed in this business, it whispered. I didn’t even realize at first that this voice wasn’t my own. It was so sneaky, so devious. I just let it dominate me without even putting up a fight.

It got worse. When the Writers Guild of America went on strike, I let that voice convince me to throw in the towel and try something else. After all, I’d failed in Hollywood, hadn’t I? Just like all those people I was so determined not to be like.

I applied and was accepted to a master’s program at a small university in Wales. Different, I thought, small, a big change from Los Angeles. Just what I need. But the program was slow, and I wasn’t learning much. And the town the university was located in was small, isolated. I’d traded a life in a city in the middle of everything for a small, back-country farming community, and I hated it.

Nothing seemed to be going my way, and none of the plans I’d made were working out. Why hadn’t I stayed in Los Angeles? Ridden out the strike, the economic downturn? Why did I have to shift gears, start all over again? I’m too old to start over again, the voice insisted. I’m too old to be playing at my life like this. I need to settle down, have a career. I need to make up my mind.

It wasn’t until the questions got broader in scope that I realized what was happening. Where is my life going? That little voice asked. What am I doing here? Am I setting myself up for a life of misery? Am I going to spend the next forty years working at something I’ll never succeed in? With a jerk, it felt like I came awake. I found myself lying in bed, feeling old and useless but not wanting to feel that way. I sat up and thought, this isn’t you!

That small thought stuck with me through the morning. Every time something negative entered my head, I thought, this isn’t you! And I pushed out the bad. I wasn’t thinking anything positive yet, but I knew what I had to do. I printed out the Christian Science Quarterly Bible Lesson for that week, “Man,” from the My Bible Lesson Website and found a quiet place to read. I ended up reading it four times that afternoon.

What I found was everything I’d seemingly lost over the past few years. Here were the answers to all those questions, to all those doubts. The first significant nudge came while I was reading this passage from Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures by Mary Baker Eddy: “Take away wealth, fame, and social organizations, which weigh not one jot in the balance of God, and we get clearer views of Principle. Break up cliques, level wealth with honesty, let worth be judged according to wisdom, and we get better views of humanity.” There it was, all right there, as if it had been written just for me. I still had plenty of serious work to do, but at least now I was moving in the right direction again—toward spiritual things, and away from judging my life from a material basis.

The second nudge came on the second reading, from this passage: “The divine nature was best expressed in Christ Jesus, who threw upon mortals the truer reflection of God ….” The idea of Jesus throwing a true reflection of God onto me was powerful: since he threw it on me, I could see I had no choice but to accept it. I was nothing but the true reflection of God, everything He is and everything He wants me to be. What a relief!

The negative, depressing thoughts from error were just that: error. And because they weren’t from God, they were nothing, were completely unreal. I couldn’t be ruled by these thoughts because they weren’t thoughts in the first place—they didn’t come from God, so they could have no power and no influence.

I came to love myself as God loved me because I was exactly the way He wanted me. “Love is impartial and universal in its adaptation and bestowals” writes Mrs. Eddy. There was no possibility that I would miss out or be skipped over. God never left me behind, and I had never been misplaced.

What my grandparents and mom had been saying to me for months finally rang true. I was in exactly my right place, and I had been all along. I was on God’s path, and I was exactly where He wanted me to be. My place was here, right now, because God, not my personal selfhood, is in control of my life.

What a weight I felt lifted! To find the freedom and the security I’d been missing for so long so simply! Of course, it had been there all along, ready for me to find as soon as I looked in the right place. The Lesson that week held one more nugget of comfort that I took away with me: “Pilgrim on earth, thy home is heaven; stranger thou art the guest of God.” Wow! I was God’s guest. I had felt like a stranger to myself for so long, and now I had found God again. It was truly like coming home—and even better to know that I’d never really been away from God. He’s always with me and guiding me.

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