Patience Helps

Religion took a back seat with me for many years. I was neither an agnostic nor an atheist though I had definite resentments against my own church. Most of them puerile, I realize now, but I clung to them and rationalized that I had had too much religion in my childhood. Perhaps sometime in the far distant future I might again turn to God, I would muse, but now I was not ready for or inclined towards any sort of organized religion. I believed myself to be a good Christian in the broad sense of the word and took Shakespeare's "to thine own self be true" philosophy as mine. Here again I was rationalizing because now I know I was not true to even myself. I blamed circumstances and people for my misfortunes and felt that hard luck was my fate. My motto was "God helps those who help themselves" so instead of turning to Him I turned from Him and became a self-willed, determined individual intent on taking happiness where I found it.