He that hath no rule over his own spirit is like a city that is broken down, and without walls.
— Proverbs 25:28

I Stopped!

How can a person be independent, autonomous, and in control of his or her own destiny? Several years ago, our two-year-old baby showed me the answer.

She didn’t want to go to bed and started to cry and fuss. I talked to her calmly and continued changing her into her pajamas. Her crying became louder and louder, rather like a Wagnerian opera. Then suddenly the crying stopped as though it had been cut off with a knife. She smiled through her tears and said, “Mommy, I stopped!”

“Is it possible,” I wondered, “to stop ourselves right in the middle of a self-destructive thought pattern?” Ernest Holmes tells us that our thoughts create our lives. I remembered reading that it is only possible to think one thought at a time. “So,” I silently told myself, “if our thoughts create our lives, and we can think only one thought at a time, if we deliberately change our thought, then our life situation has to change.”

The next day was Christmas and our daughter tripped over one of her toys and bumped her head on the bottom of the piano. She cried as though her heart would break. As I was holding her and kissing the red spot on her forehead, she said in the middle of her tears, “Mommy, remember how I stopped crying yesterday?” I nodded my head. “I stopped again!” And, indeed, she had stopped! The red spot disappeared in five minutes!

I am the master of my fate! I am the captain of my soul! At least once today I will stop when I am aware that a negative thought pattern is creeping in. I will deliberately affirm “God is Love” over and over until the negative thought pattern is forced to retire. And when I do so, I shall hear a small voice whispering gently in my ear, “I stopped!”

Rev. Dr. Rainbow Johnson
ADAAP Outreach Minister