Midweek Faith Lift
September 1, 2026
Myrtle’s Life Reflections
Rev. Deb Hill-Davis
Spiritual Passages
August 2026
In "The Wonderful Wizard of Oz," the Cowardly Lion believes that, because he feels fear, he lacks courage. But when Dorothy and her friends are threatened by the terrifying beasts, the Lion turns back to face them, even though he is frightened. Later, Oz tells him that there is no living creature that is not afraid when facing danger; courage is acting despite that fear. The Lion’s fear did not prove he was a coward. It created the very moment in which his courage could appear.
Fear is like a guard dog. It notices movement, barks and growls, and tries to protect us, but it cannot always tell the difference between an intruder and someone friendly. We do not have to obey every bark, but neither should we ignore them all. Fear can alert us to danger, vulnerability, or something we care deeply about; wisdom is deciding whether the bark calls for retreat, preparation, protection, or simply reassurance.
And for some humor:
I told my therapist, “I have this problem where I’m constantly imagining everything that could go wrong.” She said, “Give me an example.” I said, “What if I make the wrong decision? What if I embarrass myself? What if people are disappointed in me? What if I try something new and fail?” She stared at me for a moment and said, “You’ve really thought this through.” I said, “Thank you. I like to expect the worst responsibly.”
It’s not fear that gets in the way of courage—it’s armor.” - Brené Brown, Dare to Lead: Brave Work. Tough Conversations. Whole Hearts
Scripture:
"Keep alert, stand firm in your faith, be courageous, be strong. Let all that you do be done in love." - 1 Corinthians 16:13-14
We have now arrived at the end of Myrtle’s book, How to Let God Help You and today we enjoy the final chapter in which she shares something of her life story and her thoughts about it. What is remarkable is that this is at the end, not at the beginning which is not how the typical “self-help” book is written today. The focus for Myrtle was on all of us, the readers, and how we can understand and open to our true nature and be transformed. It is our journey she is interested in supporting, not hers. She was not writing it so that she could be a guest on Oprah, although she certainly could have! The tone of her writing is direct, clear and conversational, not prescriptive. And as we have noted frequently, she did not soft pedal her message.
The journey for Myrtle was from fear to an incredible faith, and that is what she offers us. Remember the affirmation from last week that she recommends we use on a daily basis:
“The all-providing Substance of Spirit is everywhere present. I mold it with my thoughts and make it tangible with my faith.”
As I read Chapter 37 “Myrtle Fillmore Talks About Her Life” that energy of courage and curiosity was evident from the beginning. As a child, Myrtle was a voracious reader and a questioning mind. Her mother had a deep faith which sustained her, but believed that if God saw fit to punish his children and cause them suffering, that was okay. At a young age, Myrtle reports that she could not and did not accept or agree with that belief. You go, Myrtle!
She also shares that she secretly took her brother’s books and go to a little corner to read them. She had a curious mind and read the old myths, fairy tales, history and scientific works that were not considered appropriate for girls! But she read them anyway! She could never understand why folks felt those books were unsuited to her “eager mind.” She eagerly linked all that she had read from antiquity to all that was being discovered in science in her lifetime. She writes on p. 182:
We are discovering that the writers of myths were becoming aware of the power of the human soul, and of the ways in which we train and develop those powers. I also liked to read books in which symbol and allegory …were the efforts of the authors to picture the experience of the human soul.
And she also loved poetry and to also write poems! And thus, the groundwork for a metaphysical understanding of Scripture was planted in her imagination!
Myrtle also loved nature and to be out in nature and received what she described as “something very satisfying from my close contact with nature.”
She thought of trees as truly intelligent, which science has demonstrated to be factually true. She acknowledges that her family had a script about the hereditary “thought of weakness” but she did not show signs of that but continued with her studies. This led to her teaching school in the deep south and her students were not much younger that she was at the time. Some of the parents objected to her being a “girl” but Myrtle’s response, “I smiled, down inside; for I could always see the funny side to things. I felt sure that I understood boys well enough to get along with them-and I did!”
Her first school was on a Civil War battlefield and the parents of her students had been in the war. She lived in the homes of some of her students and learned different ways of living, much unlike the north. She describes these years as wonderful, demonstrating again her adventuresome spirit, and she does not even mention being homesick. She meets Charles and describes him as “awfully nice” and as the man who was destined to “catch the spiritual vision with me,” although she did not know it at that time. They married and had two sons, but Myrtle notes that she kept on with her studies and her love for beauty and the things of wisdom.
Neither Myrtle nor Charles were of robust health, so their family experienced a fair amount of illness and general ill health in the early years. She never mentions E.B. Weeks and the metaphysical lecture that we all reference about her. Instead, she describes having the opportunity to investigate “spiritual science” which appealed to her reason and her intuition. She knew that God “would not create imperfect children” and as God’s child she would of necessity inherit from God. And she began to wake up, and as she says “the Spirit began to illumine my consciousness, and I saw that the life that is in us is the life of God.” She also saw that the “plan of God must be an inherent part of the mind of man.” She had learned to live in books and trees, so she began to live with God in the same way.
This was a process and she states that she did not get entirely well all at once. And she does not attribute her healing to saying constant affirmations, something we want to do to mimic her. Instead, she describes feeling like she was becoming sick with pneumonia and then staying up all night, cleaning her house and rearranging things with perspiration flowing. As the fever broke, she began to relax and breathe easier and pneumonia did not develop. She does not advise that we all do this, for which I am truly grateful!
Myrtle then describes other physical maladies which she had and how she then looked to find all her thoughts that were keeping her ill in any way without success. She reports listening and hearing Spirit say to her, “You have looked among your faults; now look among your virtues.” What happened next, to me is quite amazing. Myrtle had the self-awareness that she was holding inside all the feelings she experienced when anyone or anything hurt or displeased her. This was generally considered a virtue for women of this time. She says:
I found that I did not feel as sweet and poised on the inside as I seemed outwardly. I began to watch, and to redeem this state of mind. I determined to handle all that came to me, before I “swallowed it” and allowed it to irritate, cut, and weaken my nerves and organs. (p.187)
In the late 1800’s, years before psychotherapy determines how holding your feelings inside is toxic to your body and to your mental and emotional well-being, Myrtle realizes this and determines to do something about it. And again, this intrepid woman moves from fear to faith that a loving God is an ever -present Source for her in every way. Her faith is not in herself, in her humanness, but in her Christ self, her Spiritual self. Myrtle also did not try to understand, from a human perspective, what was changing and happening within her. She describes herself as like the blind man, healed by Jesus in John 9:25 who simply says, “One thing I know, that, whereas I was blind, now I see.”
Myrtle’s ultimate response to her healing is to simply have great faith in God, the loving Father who “had marvelously revealed Himself to me as my help in every need.” She references Hebrews 11:1 “Faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not yet seen.” She then describes acting “as if” what she hoped for were already true and plant her faith firmly in that place. It is not the false belief that there would no longer be any problems or challenges; it is the higher truth that those problems, limitations, and challenges were not the whole story, nor were they the final truth. And she describes life as gradually improving, becoming sweeter and more interesting.
May it be so for all of us, and thank you Myrtle Fillmore for sharing your journey!
Blessings on the Path,
Rev. Deb