By Helen Brown
I have always been curious about spiritual things. I grew up in a dysfunctional family with lots of arguing, yelling and heavy-handed discipline. I remember talking to God in my bed, looking up at the ceiling and hoping that He heard my cries for help. I wasn’t sure He did, but I kept calling out to Him for help, nonetheless.
I was the eldest of three sisters. I knew my father loved me, but now I realize that he didn’t love himself. He had an abusive way of treating his daughters. My mother was docile and was of afraid of my father. I was a rebellious teenager and moved out at 19. Many years of wrong decisions and poor choices followed, with multiple relationships and addictive behaviours (smoking, drinking, partying, you name it).
By age of 33 (1988), I had a 2½ year old child and was in a tumultuous marriage with lots of personal physical and mental abuse. During that time, a cousin invited me to a Pentecostal church in the Bronx where I accepted Jesus Christ as my Lord and Savior.
My Christian journey was bumpy. I initially needed a lot of counseling and support from the pastors and sisters in the church, who were a Godsend. Later I joined a non-denominational, storefront church in Queens and immersed myself in seeking God, praying, fasting, reading the Bible, taking Christian courses, and going on retreats. I became stronger spiritually and felt my life was taking a turn for the better. I stopped drinking and smoking and concentrated on “talking the talk and walking the walk.” My husband needed more assistance and was sent to various treatment centers to kick his addictive habit.
About three years into my journey, I became active in ministry. I joined the choir, taught classes, became an usher and greeter, and eventually was elected the leader of the Women’s Ministry and received the title of “Elder.” I served alongside the pastors, counselling, visiting homes and ministering in the street. I felt my life had purpose. However, after many years, I began to feel overwhelmed by the pressure of all the problems people wanted me to fix. I just couldn’t bear the burden anymore. At the same time, I began to see discrepancies in how things were being handled within the church leadership and by members of the congregation. I questioned certain rituals and even began to question the Bible itself.
In 2015, I resigned from the leadership position and left the congregation – not God – to search for something. But I didn’t know what I was looking for. I visited different churches, thinking that maybe I just needed to sit and be ministered to, instead of ministering. That didn’t seem to help. I felt lost kept praying and seeking God for answers. As I continued to search, I got into yoga, crystals, essential oils, and watched many online videos of spiritual leaders, all the while sensing that there had to be an answer out there.
In 2018, I came upon a YouTube video of Marianne Williamson talking about something called A Course in Miracles (ACIM, the Course). And thus began my on-again, off-again journey with ACIM. I bought the Foundation for Inner Peace version of the Course in 2019 and began reading it slowly while following Workbook lessons with Carol Howe on YouTube. My hunger for all things spiritual had never left me, and I was sensing an excitement with this new discovery.
In 2021, I happened upon the Circle of Atonement website and bought their Complete and Annotated Edition of the Course (CE) and have been doing the Text lessons using the commentaries of Robert Perry as well as the Workbook lessons, which I find challenging but doable if I continue being a willing student. The burden of needing to have all the answers has been slowly lifted from me as well. My little self has the proclivity to worry, control, and try to fix things. I still have work to do in that regard, but I’m trying to listen to my higher Self, who is connected to the Holy Spirit Who will not steer me wrong. I have also come to realize that the “devil” who was targeted as the culprit, was actually the ego, and that I need to take responsibility of my own thoughts.
My life at present is peaceful. I live as close as I can in forgiveness mode as I lean more and more on Holy Spirit and Jesus. I am still trying to wrap my head around the fact that there is no world and that I am not a body. I feel comfort in knowing that God never left me and that by accepting the Atonement for myself, I too am in His presence, never having left the mind and heart of God. I know that A Course in Miracles is my spiritual path and I no longer consider myself a Christian. That was a hard pill for me to swallow in the beginning. I still have a way to go, but every day I awaken to the happy (and at times not so happy) dream. I am so grateful that the Holy Spirit finally got me to this point and that I’m heading back to the home I never left.
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