The Healing Power of Love
By Gladys Taylor McGarey, MD, MD(H)
Every day we have the opportunity to choose what we are going to accept into our lives and give energy to.
"…the healing you each may administer to others may flow as His love through thee! For love healeth the wounded; it binds up the broken-hearted; it makes for understandings where differences have arisen. For God is love."
(Edgar Cayce reading 688-4)
I have a lifelong friend, Elizabeth, who has taught me lessons by the very way in which she lived her life. She is now in her 97th year and still is my greatest teacher. This spring I spent some time with her and I came away, again, with a deeper understanding of the power of love.
In 1939 after completing her training at Johns Hopkins School of Nursing, she went to India as a missionary nurse. While there, she fell in love with a young American in the Air Force. Upon returning home, they were married. The only complicating factor was that he was an only child and his mother had dreamed of his marrying a girl of her choosing. When that didn't happen, she had trouble accepting the bride he had chosen.
Their new home was a duplex. Her in-laws lived in the upstairs apartment and she and her husband lived in the ground-floor unit. Her mother-in-law chose to supervise practically everything her new daughter-in-law did, and disapproved most of the time. So this young bride was constantly faced with criticism and lack of appreciation. When her baby was born, her mother-in-law disapproved of the ways in which she was caring for her child, and let her know how she felt.
Her answer was, "Well, Gladys, you know at first it really bothered me, and I allowed myself to be hurt. It was very painful and I knew I had to do something about it. So after praying about it for some time I came to the realization that I loved my husband and his mother loved him. We both loved the same man, and we each had our own way of showing that love. My job was to love him the way I did, and there was nothing I could do about the way his mother loved him. That changed everything for me. She still continued with her ways but I did not let them affect me or take it in or accept it. I just let it be words and I went on doing what I needed to do.
"When my father-in-law had a stroke I nursed him until he died. After all, I am a nurse. And when my mother-in-law had surgery, I nursed her through that. When she died, the first item in her will was, 'Elizabeth gets my car.'"
The lovely thing is that Elizabeth raised three children, and had never had a car. They were a one-car family. So she had to take the streetcar or walk for many years until her mother-in-law willed her car to her. And now, at 97, she is the only one still alive and is still driving a car. She is the most kind, peaceful, loving, and funny person I know.
Elizabeth for me has always been a living example of what Edgar Cayce meant when he said that love heals. Every day we have the opportunity to choose what we are going to accept into our lives and give energy to. Every day she chose to concentrate on the healing, which was love. The Christ love through her not only healed the family but it healed her. She was wounded and often her heart was broken and differences arose, but she chose the path of love and has blessed all of us who know her throughout the years.
Another truth which is expressed in the readings is that ideals bring people together, while ideas separate them. Looking at Elizabeth's life, I see that she understood this basic truth. She really believed and lived her ideal-that love heals. Her mother-in-law did not understand this, but she loved her son-in her own way. Their ideas about love were very different, but as long as Elizabeth kept her focus on her ideal, they were brought closer and closer together. It took a long time, but it healed the whole family. Three generations of people have lived and are living productive creative loving lives because one person, Elizabeth, kept and keeps love as the center focus of everything.
Gladys Taylor McGarey, MD, MD(H), a pioneer in holistic medicine, is board certified in Holistic and Integrated Medicine and has held a family practice for more than sixty years. She is the co-founder of the American Holistic Medical Association, as well as the co-founder of the Academy of Parapsychology and Medicine. She uses Cayce concepts in her consulting practice in Scottsdale, Arizona and has been a study group member since 1957.
