My Children, Listen - Hardcover

Toye M.D., Catherine H.

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0966308808 ISBN 13: 9780966308808

Publisher: Caritas Communications Inc, 1998

Synopsis

Dr. Catherine Toye was at the pinnacle of her career. A graduate of one of the nation's top medical schools, she was a partner in a successful radiology practice. Without warning, she fell victim to a rare form of Meniere's disease. In an instant, life as she knew it was over. A scientist by training, Dr. Toye had not relied on faith for answers. This book is her story of how, in the depths of physical pain and emotional anguish, she found God. Through journal excerpts and personal anecdotes, follow the author on a mystical journey that spans seven years. The extraordinary phenomena she witnessed, the words and messages she heard, defied her scientific training and became her way of life. "My Children, Listen" is a chronicle of courage. It is a story about finding our way home, a parable of hope and faith, and a love story.

About this title

From the Publisher

My Children, Listen by Catherine Helene Toye, M.D. is an inspiring autobiographical account of extraordinary mystical experience and God's sustaining love in our human struggle. In that struggle, at the depth of feeling powerless, the power in being powerless manifest itself in Catherine Toye's life--transforming: agnosticism to faith, despair to hope and grief to joy.

She was a busy physician, and single mother of two, but Catherine Toye awoke one morning to find her world shattered. She writes, "I was 38 years old, happy, successful... Suddenly it was all over. One December morning I simply could not get out of bed... The room was spinning round and round..." It was her first episode of Meniere's disease, an inner ear disorder affecting balance and hearing. It was the beginning of life with chronic disabling illness that would involve more than her ears, and it was the end of her medical practice.

Devastated at her losses, anguished, wondering how she would physically care for her two young children, she sank into despair. Five weeks into illness, still bedridden, broken in body and spirit, she had her first mystical experience. She writes, "I heard a voice but I did not just hear it. I saw and felt the words spoken... Immediately, in a familiar, entirely commonplace manner, and without fear, I recognized the presence speaking to me as God." The force of this encounter, immersed in our Creator's boundless love, transformed her life--a spiritual world had opened all around her.

She told her grandmother first, "The God you've been praying to all these years is really there!" Her mystical experiences left her with the certainty that there is meaning and purpose in every aspect of our lives, even illness and loss.

Faced with chronic pain, constant loud ringing in her ears, nausea, dizziness, and fatigue, often bedridden by vertigo, she struggles to raise her children despite on-going setbacks and suffering. However, an awesome spiritual reality sustains her. My Children, Listen chronicles this powerful story over seven years in a combination of prayer journal excerpts and personal anecdotes.

Many entries are poignant and deeply moving, such as healing the sense of loss caused by her father's death when she was four; or facing medical complications that threatened to leave her own children motherless. The intensity of her experience is lightened by a winsome ability to find humor in her difficulties, such as a visit to the vet with an injured, talking parrot.

The mystical experiences she describes range from profoundly simple and beautiful to incredible, startling and fascinating. My Children, Listen includes many "locutions." The author describes these as communications from God, "... `heard' not with my ears but within my heart."

Whether you believe or not, upon reading the book through, there is a clear sense of an on-going and deepening relationship between the author and a distinct other Being.

She is the first to acknowledge those who will doubt her. She writes, "I do not have a theological background. Until the day I had a spiritual experience myself, I did not believe in their existence. There had been no room in my analytical, scientific, medical thinking for such an occurrence... To those skeptical of what I relate, I can only say, I understand." Her background as physician lends a unique perspective to her new life as patient and a disarming credibility to her account of mystical experience. In an eloquent but matter of fact style, devoid of self-pity or effort to embellish the dramatic events that unfold, she lays bare the shared bonds of our humanity.

The honest portrayal of our human frailty does more than document our common struggles and the questions that plague us about suffering and death. It is a compelling response--a manifestation of God's love for us in all our human weakness. At the least you will be inspired by the courage of one person in the face of adversity. But if you are receptive, you will hear God speaking to all His children, and feel the comfort and transforming power of His love for each of us in the pages of My Children, Listen.

About the Author

Catherine Helene Troy, M.D., was born in New York. She received her medical degree from Duke University School of Medicine and completed the remainder of her medical training, internship and residency at Duke Medical Center.

Edition details

• Publisher: Caritas Communications Inc
• Publication date: 1998
• ISBN 10: 0966308808
• ISBN 13: 9780966308808
• Binding: Hardcover
• Language: English
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 360