Positive psychology is a big buzzword these days. Look at how many books at Borders and Barnes & Noble have “happiness” in the title.
Studies on topics such as resilience, well-being and gratitude have made their way from academic journals to mainstream magazines. More than 200 colleges and universities in the U.S. offer courses in the field.
This up-swell of interest represents a dramatic shift in psychology. For decades, the emphasis in both theory and practice had been on dysfunction, mental illness and repairing emotional damage.
Then in 1998, University of Pennsylvania psychology professor Martin Seligman used his position as president of the American Psychological Association to promote the scientific study of happiness.
Though Seligman is credited with coining the term “positive psychology,” the idea of focusing not on what’s wrong with us but what’s right with us originated with another noted American psychologist more than 40 years earlier—Abraham Maslow.
He was known for his groundbreaking studies on personality and motivation, and his concepts like self-actualization, peak experience, and synergy have become part of our everyday language.
With this year being the 100th anniversary of his birth, it’s a fitting time for a look at the life and legacy of the pioneer of positive psychology.
Maslow was born in Brooklyn, New York, to struggling Russian-Jewish immigrant parents. They had come to the United States for religious freedom and economic opportunity, and throughout his life, Maslow cherished these qualities in our nation.
Thomas Jefferson and Abraham Lincoln became his heroes when he studied American history in high school; decades later they remained prime examples when he began developing his theory of self-actualizing people.
After floundering a bit at two New York colleges, Maslow transferred to the University of Wisconsin in 1928. There, he found his academic footing. Abe, as everyone called him, decided to major in psychology for what he saw as its practicality and social usefulness.
He wanted a career that would “help change the world.” He never stopped believing that social science could accomplish this goal.
Maslow’s six years at Wisconsin were important professionally and personally. Avidly studying many approaches, he was most drawn to the work of Alfred Adler, famous for his theory of individual psychology.
Optimistic and socially oriented, it emphasized the importance of parenting and schooling in helping children develop into emotionally healthy adults.
Maslow married his cousin Bertha Goodman, also a student at the university. Both were barely 20 years old. As he later reminisced, early marriage gave him a tremendous boost of self-confidence and stability. The two would be together his entire life and raise two daughters.
After receiving his Ph.D., Maslow returned with his wife to New York City. He joined the faculty of Brooklyn College in 1937 and immediately proved to be a charismatic teacher. He had a warm and inspiring manner. Students dubbed him the school’s Frank Sinatra and even cried if they were crowded out of his hugely popular classes.
In the 1940s Maslow developed his influential hierarchy of inborn needs. His goal was to understand and explain all human motivation—”Why do people do what they do?”—by integrating all existing approaches including Freudian, Adlerian, behaviorist, and cognitive-gestalt into one cohesive meta-theory.
Maslow thought each approach had its valid points but failed to encompass the big picture of personality. He theorized that human beings are motivated by their needs, which he diagrammed as a pyramid with five levels, starting with the most basic physiological needs at the bottom and rising through progressively higher, more psychological needs.
During the war years Maslow began pioneering another field: the study of emotionally healthy, high-achieving men and women—those he would later call self-actualizing.
Starting by analyzing the traits of people he admired in history and in his own life, he became increasingly excited by his investigations. He wrote in his diary, “I think of the self-actualizing man not as an ordinary man with something added, but rather as the ordinary man with nothing taken away. The average man is a human being with dampened and inhibited powers.”
Maslow interviewed many high achievers and discovered to his surprise that they often reported having peak experiences in their everyday lives: that is, moments of great joy and fulfillment. The psychologically healthier they seemed, the more often they experienced such transcendent moments.
Most of his interviewees weren’t religious. Nevertheless, they frequently used language that was almost mystical in describing their peaks of happiness—usually related to feelings of accomplishment in work or family life.
In 1954 Maslow published his landmark book, Motivation and Personality. It was a synthesis of nearly 15 years of theorizing about human nature, and it catapulted him to international acclaim. His tone was bold and confident: “The science of psychology has been far more successful on the negative than on the positive side…It has revealed to us much about man’s shortcomings, his illnesses, his sins, but little about his potentialities, his virtues, his achievable aspirations, or his psychological health.”
Especially in such growing, practical fields as education and business management, Maslow’s optimistic view of human attainment and creativity aroused tremendous interest. He moved to fledgling Brandeis University outside Boston and become head of its psychology program.
During the 1960s, Maslow’s career blossomed. Entrepreneurs sought his advice on motivating their employees. On the West Coast, where new ideas on what he called “enlightened management” were rapidly taking root in the high-tech field, his approach to job satisfaction had particular impact.
In these years, Maslow popularized the term “synergy” to describe work teams in which the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. When employees were encouraged to work together to maximize their personal strengths through interesting, challenging tasks, Maslow correctly predicted, their productivity and innovation would soar.
Stricken by a heart attack in 1967, Maslow relocated with Bertha to the San Francisco Bay area for its milder climate, and continued to write, teach, and consult.
Despite ill health, his commitment to awakening human potential never wavered. “I have a very strong sense of being in the middle of a historical wave,” he wrote. “One hundred fifty years from now, what will historians say about this age? What was really important? My belief is that…the ‘growing tip’ of mankind is now growing and will flourish….”
Maslow was right. Long after his death from a heart attack in 1970, his ideas live on in the field of positive psychology.
Heading to the great outdoors this summer to recharge your batteries? You can thank a transcendentalist for the idea. Turning to nature for spiritual sustenance might seem like an obvious thing to do, but a mere century and a half ago it would have struck most Americans as pretty farfetched (the woods used to be considered a place of danger and darkness).
How about the statement “I’m spiritual, but not necessarily religious”? You’ve probably heard that from a fair number of people. Again, it was the transcendentalists—Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, Bronson Alcott, Margaret Fuller and a handful of others—who initially popularized this idea. Even the concept of positive thinking itself had its first champions in this small, short-lived, yet incredibly influential group of New England thinkers.
What exactly were the transcendentalists trying to get at? Start with the word “transcend,” which means to move above and beyond ordinary categories and the limitations that come with them. At heart, that’s what the transcendentalists were going for. Living in a land that was redefining what a nation could be, they saw themselves as seeking a new, and greater, definition of what a human being could be.
None of them worked harder at this task than their most famous and influential member, Ralph Waldo Emerson. America’s original positive thinker, Emerson was a tireless promoter of the basic transcendentalist idea that human beings are larger—infinitely larger—than they think they are. “A man,” he wrote, “is the facade of a temple wherein all wisdom and all good abide.” What we need to do is overcome the self-imposed habits of thought that prevent us from fully realizing this potential. Or as Emerson put it, “The only sin is limitation.”
Shedding old ways of thinking sounds fine on paper. But anyone who’s tried to change, truly change, knows that in practice, it’s a whole other matter. How do we go about doing it? Through his essays, Emerson has given us three keys for unlocking the wisdom and goodness within.
Believe in Yourself
There is in each person, Emerson wrote, a “vast-flowing vigor,” an energy that we can rely upon in any circumstance. Every one of us can tap into this bottomless spiritual reservoir. But we have a tendency to deny it. Have you ever felt overwhelmed by stress and thought, Things never go my way? Beaten yourself up over your mistakes? Deflected a compliment by saying, “Oh, it was nothing”? These are all examples of self-defeating thoughts, also known as stinking thinking.
And that, so often, is what gets in our way. An unwillingness to have faith in our true potential is the single greatest setback to achieving it. “To believe your own thought,” Emerson wrote, “to believe that what is true for you in your private heart is true for all men—that is genius.” Next time you catch yourself slipping into a distorted thinking pattern, stop and do a reality check. Things just aren’t going my way right now. Then act like a genius and give yourself some credit. I might have made some mistakes along the way but what I accomplished is something to be proud of.
Peak Moments
All of us have experienced times when we’re deeply in tune with life and with ourselves, when everything comes naturally. Psychologist Abraham Maslow, father of the human potential movement, called these “peak moments.” More recently, psychology professor Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi has used the term “flow” to describe this state of total engagement. Athletes call it being “in the zone.”
The problem, Emerson realized, isn’t so much how to reach these peaks. It’s how to trust what we learn during them. “Our faith comes in moments,” he wrote. “Our vice is habitual.” The unavoidable humdrum aspects of daily routines dull our memory of how things are when we’re at our best. “So much of our time is preparation, so much is routine, and so much retrospect, that the pith of each man’s genius contracts itself to a very few hours.”
That’s why we need to burn the lessons of those few hours into our minds. We have to hold on to the perspective and clarity we achieve at our peaks and let them sustain us when we’re less inspired. “There is a depth in those brief moments,” Emerson wrote, “which constrains us to ascribe more reality to them than to all other experiences.” The sheer vividness of those highs should make it easier to recall them. That doesn’t mean living in the past. Rather, think of your moments of energy and inspiration as fuel packets. Tap into them whenever you need a boost to move forward.
Positive Is Practical—and Powerful
For Emerson, a positive attitude wasn’t a passive thing, a mere lens for viewing a sometimes difficult world in a kinder light. He believed it held a genuine practical power. Emerson scholar and biographer Robert D. Richardson, Jr., explains this aspect of Emerson’s thought in a wonderfully concrete way.
Consider Emerson’s famous adage: “Hitch your wagon to a star.” Advice that “sounds impractical if beautiful,” Richardson notes. “But it turns out to have an unexpected grounding in the real world. Emerson was thinking…about the tide-mills that used to exist along the East Coast. The incoming tide would turn the wheel one way, the outgoing tide would turn it the other; both ways ground grain and sawed wood, and it was all done by hitching the mill to the tides which are hitched to the moon. So Emerson means his spiritual advice literally.”
Don’t be intimidated by Emerson’s high-sounding language. Take his use of the word “soul.” “The soul is not an organ,” he writes, “but animates all the organs;…is not a faculty, but a light; is not the intellect or the will, but is the master of the intellect and the will.” It is “the background of our being—an immensity that cannot be possessed.” He isn’t talking about some daunting metaphysical abstraction. He’s talking about your true self—the person you are when you’re at your best, your boldest, your most alive and real.
Emerson believed that “the learned and the studious…have no monopoly of wisdom.” Much as he admired scholars, he knew they were often less likely to find their way to an experience of the authentic self than an ordinary person was. “Great is the soul, and plain,” he wrote in that populist spirit that one of his early readers, Walt Whitman, so loved and celebrated. “It is no flatterer, it is no follower…It always believes in itself.” In this and so many other ways, Emerson is the quintessential American philosopher: deep yet democratic, sophisticated yet simple as a glass of cold water on a summer day.
His views didn’t always play well with his contemporaries. He came from a long line of clergymen and started out as one himself. That made the churchmen of his day particularly critical when his thinking diverged from theirs. They found in Emerson’s rhapsodies on the mystic soul the evidence of a troublingly unorthodox sensibility.
Emerson did read deeply in religious writings outside the Judeo-Christian tradition. He studied the Bhagavad-Gita and other Far Eastern spiritual classics decades before it became fashionable. What Emerson’s studies brought him to was a greater understanding that God is in each of us and in the natural world around us—an idea that we almost take for granted today. It explains Emerson’s unflagging faith in the self’s native sufficiency and rightness, his belief that if we find our true spiritual center and act from it consistently, there is nothing we won’t be able to accomplish.
Still, that’s not to say that Emerson saw life as an easy stroll down the street. He was no stranger to hardship. By his early 30s, when he began writing the essays that would make him famous, he had already lost two brothers and buried his wife. He eventually remarried, only to lose his firstborn son at the tender age of five. These tragedies didn’t rob Emerson of his faith in life’s essential goodness, however. They only strengthened it. For him, thinking positively was a way to overcome life’s hurdles, never a means of escape from them.
If you read Emerson’s essays—”Experience” and “The Over-Soul” are excellent ones to start with— you will be amazed to see how many of the insights that fill today’s books and programs on self-improvement originated at his writing desk. From 12-Step programs to this magazine, there isn’t a single contemporary tool for learning how to think positively that wasn’t originally crafted, at least in part, by our greatest American philosopher.
“To finish the moment,” Emerson wrote, “to find the journey’s end in every step of the road, to live the greatest number of good hours, is wisdom.” Emerson and his fellow transcendentalists would be thrilled to know we are seeking—and experiencing—that wisdom for ourselves.
I almost skipped my blog today. I woke up with a cold and all of you, especially this time of year, know what that’s like.
It’s the dreaded office cold, that annual bug that burns its way through a staff. Those who contract it first are the lucky ones—they get the misery over with. The rest of us cower behind our desks, avoid contact with the infirm and wash our hands so frequently that the skin begins to slough off.
That’s me, gobbling vitamins and thinking seriously about wearing a surgical mask as the coughers and sneezers close in. I’m like one of those noblemen in Boccaccio’s Decameron, hunkered down waiting for the Plague to strike.
When the cold finally hits it is almost a relief. I want to stagger back to bed and disappear under the covers for a few days. No need to write a blog. They’ll understand.
That’s when my mother’s voice pipes up. “There’s nothing wrong with me,” she’d always insist, despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary. Mom could be standing there with an arrow through her head and she’d still insist she was in perfect health. It went beyond denial. It was almost delusional. While others groaned and moped, she kept going. Her favorite action to take when she felt something coming on was to scrub and wax the kitchen floor. I’m not kidding.
Was my mother crazy? Maybe not. She was a child of the Great Depression, a time much like today when people faced tremendous fear and uncertainty. Deprivation was everywhere and with so much going to pieces around her, I think she felt it was irresponsible to get sick let alone give in to it. It’s not a health regimen I’d recommend yet for Mom it worked. She could endure the physical wretchedness of a cold or flu but to think of herself as a sick person was more than she could bear. She’d rather pretend she wasn’t.
I’m not quite up to that but in the end I decided I should write this blog. I thought of all the times my mother was obviously under the weather—obvious to everyone but her—and she still managed to get me to hockey practice and rehearsals of my garage band. I’m not going to be a kamikaze about my cold. I know how to take care of myself, more or less.
I’m grateful, though, for the example my mother set. I’ve written before about her incredible faith, a kind of daily faith she wore like a second skin. She drew on that faith when she didn’t feel well, especially toward the end when there was no denial powerful enough to change things.
And maybe that’s the lesson I can learn from catching the annual office cold. A certain amount of stubbornness in the face of sickness is a virtue. It helps us dig down into our faith and keep going when the sniffles hit. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m going back to bed.
Edward Grinnan is Editor-in-Chief and Vice President of GUIDEPOSTS Publications.
I adjusted the blinds to let the sunshine into Becky’s room at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center. It was one of those luminous late summer days in Manhattan when the sidewalks are thick with people—office workers, shoppers, vendors, tourists from all over the world. The energy was almost palpable, not at all like the quiet little town I lived in upstate where everyone knew everyone else. “Come and look,” I said to Becky and my sister, Kathy, Becky’s mom. “It’s an amazing view.”
My 19-year-old niece had been battling Hodgkin’s disease, a form of cancer, since January. She’d entered Sloan-Kettering that morning so she could have a stem cell transplant, a desperate effort to wipe out the cancer that radiation and chemotherapy hadn’t been able to destroy. It had been a long, tough year, and I just wanted this procedure to cure Becky and for things to go back to normal.
Becky got into bed and I was still admiring the view when the door opened and in waltzed a young woman. Not just any young woman. This one had spiky black hair, a line of earrings snaking down each ear, eyebrow rings and a stud in her nose. The silver glinted in the sunlight, and for a moment I just stared. “May I help you?” I asked.
“Hi, I’m Tami. I’m going to be Becky’s primary care nurse.” Becky sat up and shook Tami’s hand. I tore my eyes from Tami’s face long enough to glance at her uniform. Something told me a belly button ring lurked underneath it. I’d seen a few kids decked out like this when I was substitute teaching, but they were a tiny minority in our town. And with two teenage sons, I’d seen my share of music videos. But this girl was a hospital nurse! How could someone who seemed to have no problem inflicting damage on her own body be trusted to take care of someone else’s?
I watched silently as Tami hooked up Becky to a couple of monitors. “I’ll be back to check on you later,” she said.
Becky turned to me the moment Tami left the room. “Aunt Ine, how could you act like that? She’ll think you don’t like her!”
“What? I didn’t say anything.”
“You didn’t have to. The look on your face said it all.” I’d never been very good at hiding my feelings. But I had to watch out for Becky. My only niece was in a fight for her life. She needed someone caring, dependable and responsible nursing her.
I unpacked Becky’s things and said nothing, resolving to keep an eye on Tami. No point in upsetting Becky further. She’d been through so much already. Having to drop out of college freshman year. Nine months of outpatient treatment at Sloan-Kettering. And the worst symptom of her illness—an intense itching that made it almost impossible for her to sleep. Her only relief was having someone rub her feet, where the itching was most severe. Becky’s father had to stay upstate and work, so I often made the eight-hour trip to Manhattan to help my sister with the round-the-clock foot rubs while Becky was being treated.
My prayers had become round-the-clock too. Ever since her diagnosis Becky had been optimistic, a real fighter. “My grandfather lived for years after he got sick,” she told her doctor. “I’m going to be just like him.” But every time it seemed Becky was getting better, we got more bad news. My pleas turned into frantic questions—Why aren’t you helping Becky, God? Why aren’t you watching over her?
We couldn’t even rub Becky’s feet anymore without wearing gowns, masks and gloves because she was at a high risk for infection until she got her new stem cells. Her friends couldn’t visit her. But Becky’s face lit up whenever Tami came in. They chattered on about TV shows, music, boys—especially their exes. It was like they’d known each other for years!
How could my wholesome niece—who loved the outdoors and never bothered with jewelry—be so comfortable with a big city girl who had more metal on her than a bicycle chain? Granted, some days Tami looked almost normal—the piercings were visible but the silver was missing. One afternoon she strutted in wearing a leather dog collar studded with metal spikes. “That girl has a problem,” I told Becky after Tami left. “Nobody with a healthy self-image would dress like that.”
Becky rolled her eyes. “It doesn’t mean anything, Aunt Ine. It’s just her style!”
Style? I didn’t see anything stylish about it. But I had to admit I also couldn’t see any reason to doubt Tami’s nursing skills. In fact, Becky seemed so at ease with Tami that Kathy and I started going for walks while she was on duty. The day of Becky’s stem cell transplant, we went all the way to South Street Seaport to buy her a watch for her “transplant birthday.” Becky recovered quickly, and on Halloween she was released. “I’ll miss you, Becky,” Tami said as she hugged her goodbye, her eyes moistening. “Now go home and celebrate.”
The celebration didn’t last. Right after Thanksgiving the cancer came back. Becky started outpatient radiation treatments again. Then she caught a cold she couldn’t shake. The day after Christmas she was rushed back to Sloan-Kettering. She had pneumonia.
A couple of days later I sat alone in the waiting room reading the same magazine paragraph over and over while I waited for Becky to be brought out. Someone sat down in the chair next to me. Tami. There was something almost comforting about her familiar strangeness. She looked me straight in the eye. “You know Becky’s in very bad shape,” she said. “There’s someone I think she needs to speak to.”
“Who?”
“Her old boyfriend. Can you track him down?” Before I could answer, Tami slipped a piece of paper into my hand. “My home phone number,” she explained. “In case you ever need me.” With that she hurried off on her rounds. For a moment I felt as dumbfounded as I’d been the first time I’d seen Tami. I tucked her number into my purse and went to find Kathy so we could contact Becky’s ex.
Tami was right. Becky was in good spirits after she talked to her old boyfriend. But her lungs were filling up with fluid and she developed shingles.
By December 30 the worst seemed over. Becky had even improved enough to eat a Big Mac. On New Year’s Eve morning, I told Kathy to catch up on her sleep. I planned to sit with Becky a few hours before taking the train home to spend the holiday with my husband and sons. I couldn’t wait for the year to end. I wanted to forget all about 1997.
But it wasn’t over yet. Becky’s doctor had ordered an X-ray that morning. The results came back just as my sister arrived at the hospital. The moment I saw the doctor, I started shaking.
“The cancer has exploded inside Becky’s chest,” she said.
“What do you mean?”
The doctor shook her head. “It means the cancer will grow into Becky’s throat. When it does, she won’t be able to breathe.” Her voice sunk to a whisper. “You’d better call the rest of the family—now.”
Within an hour the others were on their way. But they wouldn’t get to the city until at least midnight. Somehow we’d have to get through the night on our own. We couldn’t tell Becky, not when she was finally feeling better. Not on New Year’s Eve.
Kathy sat with Becky. But I couldn’t. One look at my face and Becky would see my feelings as clear as always. So I paced. Around and around the halls I went, trying to rid my mind of the image of Becky gasping for air. My niece was dying. And I couldn’t stop it. Couldn’t even manage to sit with her and rub her feet.
Every prayer I’d said for Becky had failed, yet I could do nothing else but pray. Oh, God, just take care of my niece. Give her comfort. Help me understand all this!
Down the hall a nurse turned the corner. I wished it were Tami. But she was off for the holiday. I dug into my purse and pulled out her number. In case you ever need me. I hesitated. It was New Year’s Eve after all, and Tami was young and single. Finally I went to the pay phone and called her. “If you could maybe come keep Becky company for just an hour…give us time to gather our senses…”
“Think you can hold on till eight o’clock?”
“Oh, yes! I know you probably already have plans.”
“I do now. See you soon,” she said.
I pulled myself together and joined my sister in Becky’s room.
Right at 8:00 p.m. Tami burst in, eyes shining. Hoisting a bottle of sparkling grape juice into the air, she shouted, “Let’s party!”
Tami unloaded a stack of videos, four pints of Ben and Jerry’s ice cream and four plastic champagne glasses on the windowsill. In minutes we were all scrunched together on the bed watching movies, eating ice cream and toasting with grape juice. We were laughing so much we hardly noticed when midnight passed. Who knew someone who’d once seemed so strange to me could make things feel so normal? I watched Tami slip her hand—a ring on nearly every finger—into Becky’s.
Judge not according to the appearance, I recalled from the Bible. Tami was the answer to prayer I’d been waiting for. She hadn’t looked like the answer I’d wanted. Yet God had provided in his own perfect way. He had provided for me by providing for Becky.
Tami would be there again four weeks later when Becky slipped away peacefully, surrounded by all of us who loved her. But when I think of Tami—and that’s often—I think of the joy she brought to those final minutes of a terrible year. And the only thing I remember about how she looked that night is the love in her eyes.
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I’m a forensic pathologist. My job is understanding the cause of death, but it’s also to speak for the dead. Since 1993, as coroner for Anoka County, Minnesota, I’ve been doing everything in my power to answer one question: How did this person die? Then I explain it to family members, physicians, law enforcement and the courts. Often, death is a riddle.
I’m also a doctor, and like all doctors, a healer. How could a person who spends her time examining the deceased call herself a healer? Well, I’ll tell you.
I come from a medical family. My dad is an internist and, growing up, I tagged along with him on house calls, watching him solve the mysteries of his patients’ illnesses. He practiced medicine like the country doctor you see in old movies: worn leather medical bag, stethoscope draped around his neck and a big, reassuring smile that said, “Talk to me. I’ll listen.” Same with Mom, a nurse. Watching the difference the two of them made in people’s lives, it was only natural that I’d go into medicine myself. In no other job did a love for knowledge and a love for people meet so perfectly.
It was Dad who suggested forensic pathology. He recognized my excitement over finding answers—my insatiable curiosity about how the human body works. “You’d be a doctor’s doctor,” he told me. “It’s the basis of all medicine. Nothing teaches you more about life than death.”
I liked the idea of discovering the cause of death. There is no more intimate possession than the body itself. Performing an autopsy, I don’t see an anonymous corpse in front of me, but the evidence left behind of that person’s soul: an open book telling me about how he or she lived. If well and decently, that’s evident in a thousand different ways. If badly, that’s evident too. A life story is visible right there in the organs. You can tell the choices people made in life.
I am passionate about my work. My autopsy reports are the last word on my patients. Each case is a new challenge, a new mystery, and I can’t rest easy until I’ve made sense of it. I’m not at peace with a case until I’ve discovered exactly how the person I’m examining has passed on.
Eventually an idea formed in my mind. What about the families? If knowledge really heals, why not share the knowledge I gained in my autopsies? Why not personally tell them the cause of death? Nothing in life hurts as much as losing a loved one. Maybe talking to me could help ease the family’s grief, perhaps even help in the healing process. I called the next of kin whenever possible and shared my knowledge of how their loved one had died. In almost every case it helped them.
It helped me too, fulfilling my desire to be a healer, like Mom and Dad. I opened myself up to the survivors’ pain, grief and anger, as well as their hope and gratitude. And something more…more than I could ever have imagined.
Take Julie Carson, the wife of a man named Randy on whom I performed an autopsy. She’d come home one day to find Randy dead on the floor next to his easy chair, the TV remote still in his hand.
In the left ventricle of Randy’s heart I discovered a large tumor that penetrated the main chamber. I suspected the tumor had played a part in Randy’s death, and called in a specialist to help interpret the evidence. The tests took weeks, which delayed the death certificate. Julie was left waiting, alone with her grief. In 17 years she and her husband hadn’t spent a single night apart. How could God have taken him away from her? And so suddenly, without even a chance to say one last “I love you.”
I called Julie the minute the report was ready. She wanted to know everything. “The growth in your husband’s heart was benign,” I explained. “But a piece of it broke off and entered one of his coronary arteries. The tumor fragment plugged the vessel, just as a blood clot would have. In essence, Randy died of a heart attack.”
Julie was silent for a moment. “Did he suffer?” she asked. I told her that in my opinion, Randy had slipped away painlessly.
“With his favorite toy in hand,” she said, her voice softening. “I usually got into bed while Randy was still watching TV, channel-surfing mostly. But I never shut my eyes till I heard him coming up the stairs. Can I tell you something, Dr. Amatuzio?”
I thought of my dad, who always had time to listen. “Of course,” I said.
“After Randy died, I couldn’t sleep. Then something happened. One night I finally drifted off. Footsteps in the hall woke me. I just knew it was Randy. Sure enough, he walked right into our bedroom, sat down next to me and took my hand. We talked about the kids, our finances, the house. ‘Our love is forever, he said. ‘Just think of me and I’ll be there.’ I know our love still connects us, Doctor.”
You might think this story is a rarity. But the fact is, over the years I’ve heard scores of stories like it. They’ve opened me to a whole world: the one that lies beyond the borders of death. Having grown up in the church, I understood the concept of an afterlife. Yet how amazing it was to confront it as a doctor!
Mary Bare was the mother of a young man named Greg, who’d died in an auto accident. I called Mary after conducting his autopsy and asked if she had any questions. Her first one was the same as Julie’s: “Did he suffer?” In this case as well, I was able to tell Mary that in all likelihood, Greg hadn’t suffered.
Mary seemed almost to expect that answer. “Dr. Amatuzio,” she said, “can I tell you something?” When Greg was a boy he had a favorite babysitter named Sheila. She was Mary’s favorite too because she had a special knack for comforting him. Shortly after Greg’s death, Mary called Sheila.
“Sheila told me,” Mary said, “that on the night Greg died, she had been awakened by a loud voice saying ‘Hey, Sheila!’”
Sheila sat up and saw Greg—all grown up—standing next to her bed. He was very distraught that his death had caused such pain and sadness. Sheila didn’t stop to question whether she was dreaming. She did what came naturally and comforted him, just as she had done so many times when he was a boy.
A few nights later Sheila was awakened again—this time by a gentle light filling her bedroom. Again, Greg stood at the foot of her bed. But this time there was no more confusion, no more sadness about him. “Tell Mom I’m okay now,” Greg said. It seemed that Greg’s life was going on, in a new world where he was at peace. Sheila was relieved to get Mary’s call. It was confirmation that she should relay this message of comfort sent from God to a grieving mother.
Yet sometimes people do come back from the dead. I was having lunch one day with several law enforcement officials, including a local sheriff—a shrewd and highly respected man. People had heard about my interest in the subject, and somehow the conversation took that turn. The sheriff spoke up. “Dying’s not the big deal people make it out to be. I drowned once.” I looked at him. He didn’t say “almost drowned,” he said “drowned.”
The sheriff had grown up on a lake. “My brothers and I spent just about every day of the summer swimming there and carrying on. We used to dive off the lifeguard tower and race to touch the bottom.”
But that got too easy. The sheriff and his brothers added a new twist to the game. The tower’s legs were ladders, the rungs of which started out wide and got narrower toward the top. He and his brothers would weave back and forth between the rungs as they made their way up. One day, just a few feet from the surface, the sheriff got stuck. “I looked up and saw that my brother had made it to the surface,” he said. “I panicked. Then I blacked out.” The sheriff came to in a rescue boat after mouth-to-mouth resuscitation.
“Do you remember anything from when you were unconscious?” I ventured.
The sheriff looked down. Something in his face changed. “Why, yes,” he said. “I do. I don’t usually talk about it, but it’s as clear as if it were yesterday. I remember thinking, I’m going to die. I took in a large gulp of water, and all of a sudden, I was up above my body, looking down on it. There were beautiful colors everywhere. I felt sorry for my body, but I wasn’t worried about it. There was all sorts of activity. My brothers and the lifeguard were there. But I felt perfectly calm, and found myself speeding along above the surface of the water, toward someplace so near yet so perfect I never could have imagined it. Then, all of a sudden, I was jolted back into my body.”
The sheriff said that what he remembered most was that when he came back from the stunningly vivid world he’d entered for a moment, everything in the regular world looked dull—as if he’d gone from a color movie to one in black and white.
“You know, Doc,” the sheriff said, looking at me with a twinkle in his eye, “I know that you’re the coroner and see this stuff every day. You know that it bothers a lot of folks. But I’m not afraid of death. Not after what happened to me.”
Can I explain all of these stories I’ve heard, in the way that I can explain exactly why a body I examine died in the way it did? Probably not. We are not meant to see the soul. Yet I have come to believe that these experiences reveal the truth of what I believe: Dying is part of a larger picture, a moment of transformation on a path of eternal life. Discovering the cause of death opens the door to a grander reality. We don’t end when our bodies give out. In a life full of solving mysteries, that’s the greatest one I’ve discovered—the mystery of the soul.
One of my least favorite things is finding myself in situations where, no matter how hard I try or how resourceful I am, there are problems that can’t be fixed. It makes me want to scream with frustration. Slowly, slowly, I’m learning my lesson:
I can’t always make it better, but I can always make it worse.
Yes, it’s true. And when I am stuck and shift my focus away to not-making-things-worse… well, it helps. Maybe that’s because I’m no longer feeding my own anxiety and stress into the situation. Or maybe it’s because my efforts get focused on what I can control, so I’m not circling in a frenzy around what I can’t.
There’s a corollary to this that I learned from a wise friend:
I’m only responsible for my input, not for the outcome.
I am responsible for what I teach my children, the example I set for others, the coping skills I model when faced with adversity or disappointment, the resources I pull in when help is needed.
My input includes the tone that accompanies my corrections, the attitude I display when frustrated or angry, the faith I practice (or fail to) in front of the observant eyes of others.
The outcome involves what people choose to do with all that. God gave every person in the world just as much free will as He gave me, and though I don’t always like it, their choices are their own.
If I’ve done what I could, behaved as I ought, and said what was needed, I have to let go of what happens after that. I’ve done what God asked of me.
In the end, that’s the most important thing of all.
One of the most quoted of the many quotable things Albert Einstein said was: “Imagination is more important than knowledge.”
The second, less frequently cited part of the statement is actually my favorite: “For while knowledge defines all we currently know and understand, imagination points to all we might yet discover and create.”
Imagination is forward leaning. It brings to light what is possible. It weds insight and action to vision.
Imagination isn’t just the province of artists and great minds. Every one of us is blessed with this amazing capacity, this gift of the mind. Through the power of our imaginations we can change our thoughts—and, as the philosopher and psychologist William James said, by changing our thinking we change our lives.
We use our imaginations constantly. Every time we think about something that hasn’t happened yet, we’re using our imaginations. In the morning, when we survey the prospects of our day, our minds roaming through our to-do lists, we’re performing an imaginative, creative act. We’re seeing ourselves as actors in the future through the medium of our imaginations. Thanks to imagination, we don’t have to be who we were or do exactly what we did yesterday. We can change ourselves, and thus the future. So I’m with Einstein on this one. Imagination trumps knowledge.
Imagination differs from fantasy in that it identifies a potential outcome from a plausible reality. It brings to light what is possible. But similar to fantasy, it does turn us into time travelers. Daily life unfolds on a linear timeline: We’re born, we live, we die. In between, we laugh, we love, we grieve, we forgive. We grow. Imagination lets us peer along the timeline to see who we might be down the road. Once we honestly decide to change and summon the willingness to commit to that change, it is absolutely necessary that we envision ourselves changed.
Close your eyes and clear your head of all thoughts. Concentrate your imagination on a single image: You, changed. What you look like. What you sound like. How you act. And of paramount importance, how you feel—strong, confident, grateful, happy. Through every step of your change journey, never let these images escape your thoughts. The more you imagine your change, the more you will become it.
The Miracle Season is the kind of feel-good sports movie you haven’t seen before. It focuses on a high school girls’ volleyball team – the Iowa City West High Trojans.
Sports movies often feature a team of men and women trying to overcome insurmountable odds. But The Miracle Season isn’t just about the road to victory – it’s about healing.
The movie follows the true story of Caroline Found (nicknamed Line by her teammates), a young woman full of personality, drive, and compassion who passed away after a moped accident. Her death, and the consequences of it fuel the film. Found was so loved by her teammates, her school, and her community that losing her left an unfillable void.
That’s why Caroline’s father, Ernie Found, decided to give his blessing to the movie.
“We were trying to think of what good can come from this in some way, shape, or form,” Found tells Guideposts.org of his daughter’s passing and her team’s efforts to rally and win a state championship in her name. “Not that only good can come of it. It stinks, and it hurt immensely, but here’s more to it. If this film can help others, it’ll be worth the effort.”
Found, who lost his daughter and then his wife to cancer just two weeks later, features heavily in the film. He’s played by Oscar-winning actor William Hurt on-screen. The movie not only follows the girls as they struggle to fill Line’s spot on the team and make it to another state championship but Found as well.
After the passing of his daughter and wife, Found could’ve easily retreated into himself, shut out the world, and grieved in private. Instead, as the film shows, he made a point of attending every volleyball game the season after Line died.
“I felt like I had to go,” Found says. “I was hurting, they were hurting, friends were hurting, classmates were hurting. I just felt like, it’s going to be good for everybody, just to hang in there together. Let everybody know that we’re all in this together and every little bit can help.”
That sense of community and togetherness is what ultimately tugs at the heartstrings when watching the film. With Line serving as the team’s guardian angel – angel imagery is featured heavily in the movie – Found providing comfort and a rock-steady presence. With the team’s coach, played by Helen Hunt, driving them to success, we watch as this group of girls galvanizes an entire town to honor their teammate with an inspirational motto: “Live Like Line.”
“’Live like Line’ means to live to put a smile on somebody else’s face, to try to bring joy to others, because it’s in giving of joy that you’re going to be also receiving joy,” Found says of the message of the film and his daughter’s legacy. “To live like Line, means it’s a privilege, an honor to be living, and it’s okay to go the extra mile. It’s okay to work hard, it’s okay to make mistakes.”
He hopes that’s what audiences will ultimately take away from his family’s story.
“When you get right down to it, living like Line is, “Let’s all do this together.”’
Easter is here—with its promise of spring, its big family meals, its inevitable chocolate bunnies and jellybeans. But what does Easter really mean? What does the message of Easter bring to us humans knee-deep in messes of our own making?
The Easter Message
First and foremost, it means that we serve a risen Savior. The grave could not hold Christ; he defeated death. He paid the price for our sin with his own blood. And the consequences for us are huge.
“For if, while we were God’s enemies, we were reconciled to him through the death of his Son, how much more, having been reconciled, shall we be saved through his life!” (Romans 5:10). Because Christ lives, we will live, too–both in this life and in the life to come. Jesus said, “I am the resurrection and the life. The one who believes in me will live, even though they die; and whoever lives by believing in me will never die” (John 11:25-26).
The message of Easter was first spoken to two women at Jesus’ tomb, in these simple words: “Do not be afraid…for He is risen” (Matthew 28:5-6). Jesus is with us and gives us his ability to overcome any defeat. The true Christian realizes that he, with Christ, rises above every setback, every obstacle and enters into the true meaning of living.
The message of Easter tells us: You need not be afraid of anything—not life with all its insecurities, its conflicts, its uncertainties; not afraid of even death itself. You need have no fear—no fear!
When your spirit is filled with the unshakable strength of God in the name of Jesus Christ, you get faith so deeply planted within you that when crises hit you—as they sometimes do suddenly—you automatically can look life in the face and not be afraid. You can say with the Apostle Paul, “For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Romans 8:38-39).
As you learn the message of Easter, remember: Easter is here. Be transformed. Be resurrected. Be not afraid!
Bible Verses About the Easter Message
Reflect further on the message of Easter with these powerful verses from the Bible. Read them on your own during your Easter prayers or aloud with the whole family as you do your Easter celebrations.
Who then is the one who condemns? No one. Christ Jesus who died—more than that, who was raised to life—is at the right hand of God and is also interceding for us. Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? (Romans 8:34-35)
Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! In his great mercy he has given us new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead. (1 Peter 1:3)
He has saved us and called us to a holy life—not because of anything we have done but because of his own purpose and grace. This grace was given us in Christ Jesus before the beginning of time. (2 Timothy 1:9)
I want to know Christ—yes, to know the power of his resurrection and participation in his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, and so, somehow, attaining to the resurrection from the dead. (Philippians 3:10-11)
But Christ has indeed been raised from the dead, the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep. For since death came through a man, the resurrection of the dead comes also through a man. (1 Corinthians 15:20-21)
He was made for this. Erik Pauze, the tree scout for Rockefeller Center, loved trees as a kid and was a horticulture major in college. Fresh out of school he landed a job with the gardening team at the famous New York City plaza, climbing the ranks to head gardener. For more than a decade, Erik has driven through Pennsylvania, New York and Connecticut, scouting evergreens, making a list and checking it twice, like Santa on wheels.
What does he look for? Seventy-footers at least, with perfect symmetry, “green, lush and full,” he says. “Sometimes people don’t believe me when I say why I’ve come. That’s when I show them my business card.” The crew fertilizes the hopefuls and considers how they fare during bad weather. The branches must be strong enough to bear the weight of 50,000 lights and a 900-pound crystal star on top. Erik still gets goosebumps during the countdown to lighting. “It’s a great feeling,” he says. “And everybody’s happy.”
Erik isn’t just a tree guy; he’s a people person too. He keeps in touch with families who have donated their trees over the years and calls them when he’s in their area looking for another one.
With all his experience you’d think he’d be the one to pick out his tree at home. “The family votes on it,” he laughs. “They just want me to bring my pickup to get it to the house.”
The light didn’t register at first. I must have written it off as an all-too-familiar symptom of my alcohol-induced hysteria. Slowly, however, it dawned on me that the room was pervaded by an incredible brilliance pouring through the open window.
I moved toward the source of the light but was literally driven back by the searing intensity of it. I could not keep my eyes open.
I sat down heavily, shielding my eyes with my forearm, trying to discern the source of this violent illumination. This was no gentle light. This was dominant, almost brutal. It demanded my attention.
Ever so slowly I felt myself give in to the light, in an act of involuntary surrender. All power was being drained from me. I was dying. This was the light of death.
Gradually there was a diminution of its intensity, and along with it a baffling calm welled within me, as if the very light was flowing in by particle and wave, filling the void it had hollowed out. I felt incredibly, indescribably at peace.
And with that I fell into a deep, restful sleep.
Construction activity and a cold breeze woke me. I rose and went to the window, leaning out, my gaze met by a handful of workmen just a few yards away. Attached to their scaffold were several huge work lights, which were on and extremely bright.
I slammed the window shut. And started laughing. Was it those work lights that had created the illumination I’d experienced, the hallucinatory perception of some divine cosmic light? Had that—a work light—been the true source of my epiphany?
But did it matter? Because that serenity that had overcome me just before I fell asleep lingered. I could still sense it within me, not fully expressed but there, hovering and humming. It was the manifested internalization of that epiphanic experience, real or otherwise, that mattered—and who cared if a work light was the culprit? It was my feeling of serenity, however tenuous, that was the real blessing and would be the seed of whatever change and growth might come next.
Mic in hand, I looked out at the thousands of people standing on their feet, singing at the top of their lungs. I’m the lead singer for Casting Crowns, and the feeling of that many people singing my songs never gets old. That Saturday night, February 28, 2015, we were playing the Carson Center in Paducah, Kentucky, our last show before heading home to Georgia and church the next day.
Almost all of the songs I’ve written over the years have a story behind them, a real-life person or experience, often from leading the youth group at my home church. That night, the opening chords of our song “Voice of Truth” rang out and the crowd responded. I sang, “Oh, what I would do to have the kind of faith it takes to climb out of this boat I’m in.”
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The audience sang along. It’s why they were there, to be uplifted by our music, and even more, by the message in it. But I wasn’t feeling it. It was like my own lyrics were taunting me: Dude, you don’t have that kind of faith, not to weather this storm.
Somehow I got through the song. As the crowd cheered, I stood quietly for a moment, thinking about how my life had been turned upside down just a few weeks earlier.
We’d been near the end of our tour, 80 concerts spread over six months, and I hadn’t been myself. It was like my get-up-and-go got up and went. My back hurt. I was having stomach pains, acid reflux. I felt worn out. I needed a break.
Not that I was going to get it. I work full-time as a youth pastor at Eagles Landing First Baptist Church, just south of Atlanta, part of the reason we only tour Thursday through Saturday. I lead worship for a group of more than 300 middle- and high-school kids. Answer their questions about their faith, about God. Comfort them when they’re feeling down, when someone in their family’s sick or struggling.
That’s my true calling. It’s the job I was doing before Casting Crowns was even a thing. In the beginning, writing and performing songs was just a way for me to connect with the kids.
I’d called my doctor, who’s a good friend, and told him my symptoms.
“Dude, you’ve gotta lay off the pizza,” he’d said. “Let’s do some tests. I want to make sure that you don’t have a stomach ulcer.” Wednesday, february 11, first thing in the morning, I went in for a CT scan. Right after that, I went to a funeral for a church member. Near the end of the service, I felt my phone buzz. I sneaked it out of my pocket. There was a text from my doctor: Bro, I need you to call me.
I went out to the parking lot and called him back. “We found something on the scan,” he said. “There’s a mass on your kidney. It looks solid. I think it’s cancer.”
What I heard was, “You’re going to die.”
“Listen, if you were to lay every type of cancer there is out on a table, this would be the type of cancer you’d want,” my doctor said.
I wondered why I couldn’t just get a whole different table. I hung up and walked to my car in a daze, wondering how I was going to break the news to my wife, Melanie. Our four kids. Our church. The youth group. The band. The idea of telling them all made my head spin.
I thought, Maybe no one besides Melanie needs to know. I didn’t want to scare our kids. I definitely didn’t want everyone feeling sorry for me or making a fuss. I didn’t want people sharing inspirational pick-me-ups they saw on Twitter. Telling me everything happens for a reason. All the stuff I’d seen happen to other people who were hurting.
My job, my calling, was to be a comfort for them. To give them strength. I wasn’t going to be the guy who needed help and prayers. No way. This was between God and me. A private battle.
I called Melanie, told her about the tumor, that the doctor had said not to stress about it. I avoided using the word…
“Is it cancer?” Melanie asked.
“Yeah, that’s what they’re saying.”
Our youth group Bible study met that night. I tried to joke around, be present for the kids—including my own—act like everything was normal. But all I could think about was that there was something malignant inside of me, trying to kill me. At the end of Bible study, I went to my office and sat down at the keyboard. Started noodling around.
Slowly words came: “No one would blame you, though, if you cried in private, if you tried to hide it away, so no one knows, no one will see, if you stop believing.” Was that what I was most afraid of? Not dying but, rather, not believing and having people see my faith falter?
The next day, Melanie and I went to see a urologist. He agreed it was likely cancer and ordered a second CT scan for confirmation. We drove home in silence. “How do you want to tell the kids?” Melanie finally asked.
“I don’t want to upset them,” I said.
“They’ll be okay,” she said. “We’re going to get through this together.”
I talked to each of our kids individually, from youngest to oldest. I tried to be strong, but they saw right through me. What if by being open, I’d made everything worse?
Friday the urologist told me my kidney would have to be removed. I’d be laid up for at least four weeks. “You won’t feel one hundred percent for a while longer,” he said.
There was no way I could keep this a secret.
I had to let everyone at church know, but I was too chicken to do it. So I told one of the pastors and he announced it at the end of Sunday service. I’d hightailed it out of there before anyone could catch me. I couldn’t take having all eyes on me, the looks of pity. By the time I got home there were, like, 90 texts on my phone.
I told the kids in youth group that Wednesday night. That was hard. “How could God let this happen to you?” some asked. I tried to explain that faith doesn’t spare us from hardship, but I could tell they were shaken, questioning everything I’d taught them. I told my bandmates the next day. It never got easier. Each time, it felt like the words were being pried out of me.
Now, with less than two weeks till my surgery, I stood onstage at the Carson Center in Paducah, staring out at the crowd. They were moved by our music. Why wasn’t I? Why did God feel so far away?
The next song on our set list was “Just Be Held,” one of the few that didn’t have a specific story or person behind it. I’d written it two years earlier and had never been entirely sure why. The band started up. There was no time to think. I had to sing.
“There’s freedom in surrender… when you’re on your knees and answers seem so far away, you’re not alone, stop holding on and just be held….”
It was as though I was hearing those words for the very first time. Suddenly I knew who this song had been written for, and why. God in his infinite wisdom had given it to me two years earlier, knowing how desperate I would be after my diagnosis. I didn’t need to hold it together. I needed to be held, to accept his love from as many people as wanted to share it with me, to receive their prayers, all the prayers I could get.
I didn’t quite have the nerve to tell the crowd then and there. But back home the next day, I e-mailed the morning-show hosts at The Joy FM in Atlanta. “I wanted you to know I have kidney cancer,” I wrote. “Please ask your listeners to pray for me.”
Almost instantly they e-mailed back. Could they come interview me live? I could almost feel the ground shifting under my feet. I’d have to put my cancer, my fears, my hurt, myself, out there. I would have to be vulnerable. Then I remembered the ultimate vulnerability of Jesus when he was nailed to the cross for all mankind to behold. It gave me the strength I needed.
The interview didn’t take long. That afternoon, on Facebook, I had messages, prayers and love from more than 90,000 people! Someone started a Twitter hashtag, #prayformark. By the next morning, it was trending number three around the world. I wasn’t totally sure what trending even meant. All I knew was I could feel the love coming from all directions. I felt lifted. God was cradling me in his arms, holding me tight.
That love helped me through the surgery and the 11 days I spent in the hospital, recovering from complications. It got me through the next four weeks while I was laid up in bed. Melanie and our kids and I hung out, watching movies, talking and praying. Cards arrived from all over the world. Prayer quilts. Photos of youth groups. It was humbling. Overwhelming.
I carry that love with me even now, two years later. These days I tell my story at every concert, asking cancer survivors to stand and be recognized. I don’t mind being the hurting guy, the vulnerable one, anymore. Because I know we’re all in the same boat, arms outstretched in the storm, just needing to be held.
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