How To Stop Worrying And Start Living

I am calling this woman Mary Cushman, although that is not her actual name. She has children and grandchildren who might be embarrassed to see her story in print, so I agreed to disguise her identity. However, the woman herself is real- very real. A few months ago, she sat in the armchair beside my desk and told me her story. Here is how it goes:

"During the depression," she said, "my husband's average salary was eighteen dollars a week. Many times we didn't have even that because he didn't get paid when he was illand that was often. He had a series of minor accidents; he also had mumps, scarlet fever, and repeated attacks of flu. We lost the little house that we had built with our own hands. We owed fifty dollars at the grocery store-and had five children to feed. I took in washing and ironing from the neighbours, and bought second-hand clothes from the Salvation Army store and made them over for my children to wear. I made myself ill with worry. One day the grocer to whom we owed fifty dollars accused my eleven-year-old boy of stealing a couple of pencils.

My son wept as he told me about it. I knew he was honest and sensitive-and I knew that he had been disgraced and humiliated in front of other people. That was the straw that broke my back. I thought of all the misery we had endured; and I couldn't see any hope for the future. I must have become temporarily insane with worry, for I shut off my washing machine, took my little five-year-old daughter into the bedroom, and plugged up

?How To Stop Worrying And Start Living? By Dale Carnegie 100

the windows and cracks with paper and rags. My little girl said to me: 'Mommy, what are you doing?' and I answered: There's a little draught in here.' Then I turned on the gas heater we had in the bedroom-and didn't light it. As I lay down on the bed with my daughter beside me, she said: 'Mommy, this is funny-we just got up a little while ago!'

But I said: 'Never mind, we'll take a little nap.'

Then I closed my eyes, listening to the gas escape from the heater. I shall never forget the smell of that gas. ...

"Suddenly I thought I heard music. I listened. I had forgotten to turn the radio off in the kitchen. It didn't matter now. But the music kept on, and presently I heard someone singing an old hymn:

What a Friend we have in Jesus,

All our sins and grief's to bear!

What a privilege to carry

Everything to God in prayer.

Oh, what peace we often forfeit

Oh, what needless pain we bear

All because we do not carry

Everything to God in prayer!

"As I listened to that hymn, I realised that I had made a tragic mistake. I had tried to fight all my terrible battles alone. I had not taken everything to God in prayer. ... I jumped up, turned off the gas, opened the door, and raised the windows.

"I wept and prayed all the rest of that day. Only I didn't pray for help-instead I poured out my soul in thanksgiving to God for the blessings He had given me: five splendid children- all of them healthy and fine, strong in body and mind. I promised God that never again would I prove so ungrateful. And I have kept that promise.

"Even after we lost our home, and had to move into a little country schoolhouse that we rented for five dollars a month, I thanked God for that schoolhouse; I thanked Him for the fact that I at least had a roof to keep us warm and dry. I thanked God honestly that things were not worse-and I believe that He heard me. For in time things improved-oh, not overnight; but as the depression lightened, we made a little more money. I got a job as a hat-check girl in a large country club, and sold stockings as a side line. To help put himself through college, one of my sons got a job on a farm, milked thirteen cows morning and night. Today my children are grown up and married; I have three fine grandchildren. And, as I look back on that terrible day when I turned on the gas, I thank God over and over that I 'woke up' in time. What joys I would have missed if I had carried out that act! How many wonderful years I would have forfeited for ever!

Whenever I hear now of someone who wants to end his life, I feel like crying out: 'Don't do it! Don't!' The blackest moments we live through can only last a little time-and then comes the future. ..."