Remember Me
By Margaret Pengelly
I love my three boys dearly and equally but when one of them came home from university for the summer to earn some money for his next year I was worried. He and I tended to butt heads a fair bit and this was uncomfortable for both of us.
I was always on his case for being what I thought was inconsiderate – not cleaning up after himself, leaving his dirty socks wherever he happened to take them off, shoes in the way for us to trip over, glasses leaving marks on the coffee table, food prep all over the kitchen counter, etc., etc. I wasn’t looking forward to this next visit. I hadn’t been able to change his behavior in the past but maybe it was time for me to change my thinking about it.
I had asked the Holy Spirit to help me to see this differently while meditating on a passage from the Workbook of A Course in Miracles: “The light has come. I have forgiven the world.”
The light came and I suddenly saw why he was leaving things all over the house. He was asking me to remember him. After that, whenever I found any items he had left out of place, I remembered him and sent him love. It made me smile thinking that he really, really wanted me to remember him. Instead of leaving everything where he had dropped them and greeting him at the door with my list of complaints, I now picked them up and put them away all the while sending him love.
To my surprise, after less than a week of putting this into practice he no longer left anything lying around. We had the most wonderful relationship that summer and are still very close.
I can’t guarantee you can change anyone else’s behavior by sending love, but I can tell you I tried this method out on my husband. He had a habit of leaving coffee grounds on the kitchen counter. Each morning I was irritated when I saw the mess. OK, I thought, it’s time to try out my “remember me” exercise, so each morning when confronted with the coffee grounds, I smiled and sent him love. Did he stop leaving the coffee grounds on the kitchen counter? No, indeed this habit continues to this day. I like to think of the coffee grounds as his love letter to me. I don’t want him to stop. The miracle was still delivered – I no longer felt irritated by this messiness. Sending my husband love changed ME! I found peace and joy and love in one simple act of changing my mind.
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Therefore, seek not to change the world, but will to change your mind about the world. [CE T-21.I.1:6]
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If you enjoyed this story you might enjoy this one!
Or you may be interested in delving deeper into A Course in Miracles.