GetOut Magazine

Scottsdale author recounts her life in ‘Chasing God’
By BETTY WEBB
Get Out

Life never followed a straight course for Shirley Cunningham. It often seemed to make no sense, but now that Cunningham looks back, she can see there was a pattern.

The whole thing was about experiencing forgiveness and acceptance, but that knowledge didnt come easily, says Scottsdale's Cunningham, a counselor who has a master of social work degree and is also a Certified Independent Social Worker.

Cunninghams new memoir, Chasing God, chronicles the Scottsdale resident's event-filled life. At the age of 21, she entered a convent. At the age of 28, she left. At the age of 30, she married an ex-priest. At the age of 52, she divorced him. At the age of 57 she married again. At the age of 59 she was diagnosed with breast cancer.

The irony was that I had been afraid to marry my second husband because he had such serious health problems and I had never been sick a day in my life, she says. I was afraid I wouldnt be able to deal with it. But I finally decided to accept his invitation to love, and with that realization, I was able to go forward and take the risk. Two years later, I was the one who fell sick.

Cunningham says her husband, who suffered from heart disease, became the rock that steadied her recovery.

He was terrific, she says. He knew what serious illness was like, and so he stuck to me like a burr. He let me cry, he let me be angry, he let me go through all the things I had to go through. But he never let me suffer alone.

Most if not all illness bring gifts along with the suffering, Cunningham points out. During recovery (her health is now fine), she experienced a great surge of creativity. She began to paint, to draw, to write. And her spirituality, which had continued to be the major driving force in her life, blossomed in unusual ways.

I had a powerful intuitive experience, she says. A wise woman led me into a meditation and told me to envision an altar, and to put on that altar whatever it was that had been blocking me. After Id put my anger and resentment there, she told me to look at the altar again and Id find a gift that God had left for me. I looked, and I saw a pen set! It was the same pen set my father had given me when I graduated from high school.

Id been angry and hurt back then when I received it, thinking it proved that he didnt know me at all. But now I realize that he knew me better than I knew myself. He recognized in me the writer that it took me 60 years to discover.

SEMINAR
Shirley Cunningham will conduct a six-week seminar titled Chasing God: A Workshop on Journaling, Dreamwork and Intuition Development beginning 6:30 p.m. Wednesday at Paradise Valley United Methodist Church, 4455 E. Lincoln Drive, . The workshop is $100 and includes free child care at the church; reservations are required.