In 1985 my wife Sylvia, our ten-year-old daughter Alexandra, and I were living in a big, two-story house in Fort Worth, Texas. I was working at the Fort Worth Star-Telegram as a writer and editor. As I frequently had in the past, I took my family with me on assignment. We were in South Texas when I received word that our house had burned to the ground.

Standing in the ashes of what used to be our house was a traumatic experience. But it was an opportunity of great growth for me because I realized—even in the midst of all  the loss and devastation—how good people are as they responded in our time of crisis, opening their hearts to us. I learned to see God even in such a difficult situation.

It was at that time a friend gave us a copy of a little book called The Game of Life and How to Play It by Florence Scovel Shinn. She was a metaphysical writer in the 1920s. Her whole approach to life is very much like the Unity one: knowing that all is in divine order, that all is good, that all is unfolding as it should, and that God’s presence is everywhere and in everyone.

As I began to embrace this positive approach to life, I learned about the good in change. Before the fire, Sylvia and I had been going through a period of “divine discontent.” We wanted to leave our jobs and make a move, but we didn’t want to leave the security of our comfort zones. After the fire, we had the insurance money and no reason not to move on to a whole new life.

We decided to make a radical move. We moved to a rural mountain area of Arkansas and felt incredibly free.

I was beginning to understand that change is constant; it’s just part of life. Then I started realizing that change is really creation. Creation is always something exciting and fulfilling and new. So I viewed change as the energy and substance of God constantly creating and renewing itself.

During our years in Arkansas, Sylvia and I did freelance textbook writing and editing. When the nature of the textbook industry started changing, it became clear that I needed to get a full-time job.

Sylvia and I had begun exploring spirituality and had been led to a Unity church. I wanted to start working more with spiritual ideas, so I prayed: “Use me, God. I feel I’m ready to use my background as a writer and an editor in spiritual work, and I can’t see how I’m going to accomplish this living on the top of a mountain in Arkansas.”

In my search, I called the world headquarters of Unity School in Missouri, and that very day the position of associate editor of Unity Books opened. I was hired, and as associate editor I worked with spiritual ideas, helping people become more aware of their God essence and their Christ presence through the Unity books that I helped edit and through books that I wrote myself. This all became possible because I opened myself to greater good.

Sylvia and I had a remarkable, wonderful relationship throughout our thirty years of marriage. In 1998 she was diagnosed with leukemia and passed away in the fall of 2001. During the time she was going through her leukemia challenges and later when she was diagnosed with a brain tumor, she kept such a fantastic attitude about life.

She was an inspiration to me and to so many others because she was constantly appreciating and being aware of every blessing, of all the love that was around her and within her. No matter how many abilities she lost, no matter how much the disease and the condition progressed, she was thankful each day for whatever she had that day and thankful for the love of family and friends.

When any of us approach life from this perspective, we can deal with whatever life brings us. As physical beings, we consider death to be the ultimate change, but even when it comes, we can know that it’s part of the divine order of eternal life.

This kind of attitude does not cause us to give up on life. It encourages us to appreciate life even more. Often we tend to appreciate the so-called good things that are happening in life and not the negative, or what we might label the bad things. But we need to get to the point where we go beyond the labels and know that in everything that is happening, God is creating, God is continually expanding.

Oh, we grieve. We go with our emotions to the depth that we need to in whatever grieving process is going on. We grieve for a house, for the loss of a home. We grieve for the loss of a job. We grieve for the loss of a loved one; such grief goes very deep. We need to own those emotions, grieving as much as is necessary for us. But at the same time, we realize that grief isn’t all there is, that what seems so final in the midst of change is not at all final. The creative energy and spirit of God are still at work in what’s happening.

I helped care for Sylvia during this time of her own transition and saw how she was coping with not wanting to leave family and friends. Through her own example, she taught me and others to approach death from a positive, spiritual perspective.

During this same period, I was going through interfaith ministerial training, and the desire was welling up within me to have a more hands-on ministry, to be more involved with people at the point of significant changes in their lives. I wanted to help others see that God is in the midst of whatever is going on and to help them find comfort in some way in dealing with the changes.

I am now going through a chaplaincy training program in California. I feel this is the avenue to carry on the lessons about change that I’ve learned—especially the lessons that Sylvia taught me so clearly. I can encourage others to be thankful for what blessings we all have at any moment, to live in the now, and to be aware of God as our source.

In chaplaincy, I am working in hospitals with patients and their families and with hospital personnel. I think that being a chaplain is a way for me to be an instrument of God and to say yes to the ways God wants to use me. And it’s a way for me to honor Sylvia.

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Raymond Teague is an interfaith minister, an editor of spiritual publications, a popular New Thought speaker, and an award-winning journalist. A lifelong movie buff, he is the author of Reel Spirit: A Guide to Movies That Inspire, Explore and Empower and the young adult novel Shadow’s Stand.


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