Resisting the Negative Thoughts

For over a week I've been feeling the urge to get back to writing, to use writing as an outlet for the emotions this pandemic has brought to my life.  And for much longer than that I've had ideas brewing in my head for some pretty deep and meaningful (I hope) posts.  But then life.  It just seems to get in the way and things since to keep distracting me.  My new normal of being at home with the kids but still working and on home assignment (still working out what that will look like....for now it's reading lots of emails and staying in contact with my students/their parents via social media, texting etc) and trying to get them to do some school work, some practical skills (cook and bake, clean and organize) all while daily the rules, the restrictions, the recommendations and, sadly, the number of cases and deaths changes and I feel like the news channel is a magnet that keeps me stuck in front of the tv, lead my mind to challenging places and my fears to rule my heart.  

But today my friend Jennie posted this on facebook and it's helping to ground me....in Him.

Me: Okay, God, here's the thing. I'm scared. I'm trying not to be, but I am.

God: I know. Want to talk about it?

Me: Do we need to? I mean, you already know.

God: Let's talk about it anyway... We've done this before.

Me: I know, I just feel like I should be bigger or stronger of something by now.

God: *waiting patiently, unhurried, undistracted, never annoyed.

Me: Okay. So, I'm afraid I'll do everything I can to protect my family and it won't be enough. I'm afraid of someone I love dying. I'm afraid the world won't go back to what it was before. I'm afraid my life is always going to feel a little bit unsettled.

God: Anything else?

Me: EVERYTHING ELSE.

God: Remember how your son woke up the other night and came running down the hall to your bedroom?

Me: Yes.

God: You were still awake, so when you heard him running, you started calling out to him before he even got to you... remember? Do you remember what you called out to him?

Me: I said, "You're okay! You're okay! You're okay! I'm here."

God: Why did you call to him? Why didn't you just wait for him to get to your room?

Me: Because I wanted him to know that I was awake, and I heard him, and he didn't have to be afraid until he reached the end of the dark hallway.

God: Exactly. I hear you, my child. I hear your thoughts racing like feet down the dark hallway. There's an other side to all of this. I'm there already. I've seen the end of it. And I want you to know right here as you walk through it all, you're okay. I haven't gone to sleep, and I won't.

Me: *crying. Can we sit together awhile? Can we just sit here a minute before I go back to facing it all?

God: There's nothing I'd love more.

I don't have to be brave, certain or confident in this, I just need to rest in Him, to lean into His protective arms and feel assured that's I'm ok, that our world is ok, that God's got this.  I may not be able to see that right now but He can. 

And as I think about that I remember this devotion I shared last week. Max Lucado is a wise man with a great sense of what the world needs to hear at times like this.  While he didn't write this in our current times, it certainly does apply.  I was quite drawn to the discussion on Philippians 4:6-8

⁶ Do not be anxious about anything, but in every situation, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. ⁷ And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.

⁸ Finally, brothers and sisters, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable—if anything is excellent or praiseworthy—think about such things. ⁹ Whatever you have learned or received or heard from me, or seen in me—put it into practice. And the God of peace will be with you.

That's something I definitely wasn't doing enough, bringing my requests to God, and especially not with Thanksgiving.  Sometimes that's pretty hard.  But breaking down this scripture and find ways to celebrate things in my life definitely is changing my mindset. And so like the woman Max Lucado shared with his readers, I decided to break things down....

“Finally, brothers, whatever is true…” What is true in my life at this particular moment? The blessing of all my family spending time together at an age where my boys have begun to resist family time. 

“Whatever is noble.” The blessing that seeing the compasssion and concern my children are showing for those most vulnerable to this disease is.  

“Whatever is right.” The blessing of seeing the world stepping up to support those most vulnerable and at risk to the virus...the elderly, the compromised and the marginalized....perhaps especially the marginalized.  I've seen so many amazing posts about donations and assistance for low income families and for homeless individuals.  

“Whatever is pure.” The blessing of  hearing the pure innocent laughter of my middle son as he watched the waves of Lake Huron crash into the pier on our 'homeschool field trip'.  This child guards his emotions and pushes out a tough kid attitude so often, he tries so hard to hide his true heart and his 'inner child' so often.  This laughter was such a pure moment!!!!

“Whatever is lovely.” The blessing of the love so many are showing each other in these times.  The messages I get almost daily from friends checking in on me, the love I feel for the people who care so deeply for others. 

“Whatever is admirable.” The blessing of a caring and compassionate leader, the strength I see our Prime Minister and the decisions our government has made to help support our country in this crisis is very admirable.  

“If anything is excellent.” The blessing of watching my children work together to make cookies to bless others with.  

“Or praiseworthy.” The blessing of worshiping a God, a Father, who is there, always, for his children, who forgives them time and time again and welcomes them into His rest.  

“Think about such things.”

As Max pointed out, there are a great many things we don't have control over....and nothing is so clear to us then when we are going through a crisis such as this.  But what we do have control over is our mindset, our thoughts.  

Be careful what you think, because your thoughts run your life. — Proverbs 4:23 

If you want to be stuck in perpetual worry, in fear, in uncertainty, then let your thoughts wonder to all the confusion, chaos, fear and anxiety the world has to offer right now.  Dwell on the people who aren't helping the situation, stew about all the things you can't do right now and all that you don't have.  If you 'want to be happy tomorrow? Then sow seeds of happiness today.' Look at the blessings you do have, enjoy the time with the people you are with in your home, encourage others, walk outside and see the beauty of God's creations.  

Allowing the darkness of the unknown to come into our hearts will begin to extinguish our inner light. It will bring us to a place of sadness and frustration and it will tear us down.  Let the light in.  Let your thoughts be positive, your energy be uplifting.  Be a beacon of hope for yourself and those around you.  

Don't choose anxiety, fear and darkness.  Choose trust, hope and light.  

Make a Choice

For many years, all of my childhood and half my adult life I am guessing, I didn't really grasp that Jesus, God and the holy spirit were separate entities so to speak and yet one in the same.  For me I think I believed that God was the supreme being and Jesus was his voice on earth, his son who came to teach us and save us, connected to each other but not one in the same.  The holy spirit wasn't something I understood at all and definitely not something I understood to dwell within me.
When I began to pray with intent for my boys, my pregnancy, the crisis we were going through and actually felt like I had been given a clear answer to prayers from God at times my faith began to change.  It started as the tiniest of mustard seeds and slowly began to grow but it took a crisis in my marriage, a rock bottom hit for my husband that lead him to accepting Jesus into his life and our subsequent change to more living faith for me to begin to grasp the trinity, to grasp that Jesus was God and the holy spirit was their voice inside my head and heart.
Exploring that has not been easy and many times I come across something that really makes me think, really rips what I believe apart or at least makes me work to come to terms with it.
I recently read a christian fiction novel called Self Incrimination by Randy Singer.  The main character in the book, surprise surprise, goes through a personal crisis which forces her to explore her faith and beliefs and eventually give her heart to Jesus.  She, herself, is reading 'Mere Christianity' by C.S. Lewis and as she digs deep in to her belief that Jesus was a great teacher and God was all the all powerful being she explores this quote in the book.

“I am trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Him: I’m ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don’t accept his claim to be God. That is the one thing we must not say. A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic — on the level with the man who says he is a poached egg — or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God, or else a madman or something worse. You can shut him up for a fool, you can spit at him and kill him as a demon or you can fall at his feet and call him Lord and God, but let us not come with any patronizing nonsense about his being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to.”

Now if you are like me, wrapping your head around what Lewis is saying there takes some time, brain power and deep thinking.  Thankfully I had the author of the book, the character in the book, to help me process it with this part being key....

You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God, or else a madman or something worse.

You must make a choice.  Either Christ as God or Christ as lunatic.  It's that simple. If Jesus came and did all that he did and said all that he did then he's either crazy a jaybird, as evil as the devil or he's not just merely a teacher about God but He IS God! It's that simple! Jesus was so much more than just a teacher, he did so much more than just come to teach.  

As the character analyzed her view on why she had resisted Christ as God and not as only 'the good teacher', I realized that I definitely had my own resistance to overcome in fully trusting God too.  

You see the character had lost her first husband at a very young age to cancer.  At the time she had been attending church faithfully and prayed often.  She prayed for her husband to be healed and she believed that God had not answered her prayers, that God had allowed her husband to die.  So if Christ was God then Christ, Jesus the good teacher, had allowed her husband to die.  He had heard her prayers and allowed him to die.  

And as I read that part I felt myself go back in time to a hospital room, a woman who looked an awful lot like me holding and rubbing her pregnant belly and praying for the two baby boys inside of her.  Praying to God to heal those babies and to keep them safe.  And then finding out 36 hours later than one of them was gone.  And losing bits of her faith, questioning a God that could make her pregnant with two babies only to take one of them away.  

I realized that I definitely struggled with loving Jesus and God as the same because I couldn't sort out 'the good teacher' from the 'all powerful God'.  Jesus has always been 'good' to me and I've never really thought of him as a being who had the power to give and to take away.  He was here to give, to serve, to teach....right??? Right???  But when I look at it from the perspective of an all powerful being who willingly came here to teach God's people, to model what God wants from us, to serve us all the time knowing that he was going to die, that he was going to be the passover lamb who would be a sacrifice for our sins then I know he was so much more than a good teacher and that he was, is and forever shall be, God.  And if He is God then He is just as responsible for answering my prayers in a way that was not what I wanted.  He is just as 'responsible' for my son's death as God is. 

Jesus allowed my son's death. 

Wow!  When I say it that way it does kind of hurt and it brings me to a place where I realize that there are times when I still feel anger about this, to a place where I just don't understand the why.  It brings me to a place of questions...still, even now, 11+ years later. 
Just last night we talked about facing a wall in our faith and how we have to overcome the wall, go over the wall, or we just will move to a different place and hit the wall again.  My friend actually moved me as an example when talking about how hard it is to overcome the wall and how easy it is to get stuck in the 'why'.  I've talked about this before in this blog post   and this message still rings true to me....

I don’t know why my son died. I don’t know why my twins didn’t get to grow up together. I don’t know why this is the path of my life. What I do know is that God is walking it with me, that Jesus came and met me in a few different ways, in a few different places and brought me stories, people and information out of nowhere….all of which gave me hope. What I do know is that God has given me a gift to write and the Holy Spirit breathes words into me that I can share that may help others find that hope too. And what I also know is that someday we will all be reunited again. Someday the answers to the why’s will be clear….or perhaps clearer. For now I will focus on what….what I can do with what I know, what I experienced, what I see, what I sense and what I feel. For now the what is all that matters.

That's what got me over the wall of my journey but it certainly wasn't found in the moment, in the days, weeks or months afterwards either.  It was part of a life journey, a choice I had to make to move my head and heart in that direction and still has many unanswered questions.  And that's ok.  It's natural and it's a human response to spirit filled moments and to every day moments too.  The important part to me is that I have given it to God and I've accepted that Jesus came to set me free.  I'm working to continue to trust Him and am exploring what that really means for me in my life.  

I've made a choice to believe, to trust and to follow.