Make it stop!!!

Warning: this post was written over a few days, so think of it as a process...perhaps a process that jumps around a bit, but in the end is fairly cohesive.

This last week was HARD to get through. All day today I’ve felt as though I have a massive hang-over, that my emotions are volatile, and I’m just exhausted. I periodically go through a phase of being extremely frustrated with myself over many things… all tied down to thinking that I’m not thinking as I should. My mind has been wrung and blown to pieces in trying to reason about reasoning, and it’s not a pretty picture. At times like these I wonder why things are the way they are, why I can’t seem to be living a care-free life, and why I get hung up on silly little things that are perfectly fine. This process of navel-gazing drives me crazy! Navel-gazing and analyzing absolutely everything that goes on around me. My mom recognized that and told me to stop. I can't say that being so analytic makes me fun to be around.

I’ve struggled all week with my mind and seeing how people work with the mind in psychiatric settings. The mind is so malleable, what goes on in it changes how we behave. Things with the mind have been the latest and greatest fad it seems (or just seems to be because I’m living quite in the middle of it all)…and it seems so me sometimes that if I could just stop thinking, and just LIVE, I would be okay…and so would everyone else. But it’s just not true. So here I sit, with my prefrontal cortex (aka the reasoning part of your brain) aching and swollen with the Tylenol merely numbing it a bit. A couple of days this week I ran head-on with issues regarding people and my faith. It’s SO hard to see people wanting forgiveness, hope, joy, and not being able to, and not seeing, anything offered to them to help out in the specific ways I know would help out. I cried…hard. There are so many choices that we have… and it’s with our minds that we make these choices.

But at the same time, I was talking with one of the OTs and was reminded that I am not the savior. I myself cannot save these people. I cannot fix their minds. I can’t even fix my own mind. I am not responsible for people’s choices, and their mental rehabilitation. I cannot persuade someone to believe, to be better, to think better. I know I have those choices for myself although sometimes it feels like I can’t even persuade myself. But again, I cannot salvage my own mind. That doesn’t make me a horrible wimp with no control over myself, but there’s something about my mind that often just leans toward destruction. Do I need to convince myself that God can take care of my mind? Why do I think that I have to?

I couldn't say it better (I'm pretty sure I've stated this before in another blog within a different context, but here it is again):

"For what I am doing, I do not understand; for I am not praciticing what I would like to do, but I am doing the very thing I hate... no longer am I the one doing it, but sin which dwells in me. For I know that nothing good dwells in me, that is, in my flesh; for the willing is present in me, but the doing of the good is not...I find then the principle that evil is present in me, the one who wants to do good. For I joyfully concur with the law of God in the inner man, but I see a different law in the members of my body, waging war against the law of my mind and making me a prisoner of the law of sin which is within my members. Wretched man that I am! Who will set me free from the body of this death? Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord!" (Romans 7:14-25ish)

Often I feel stuck in a destructive cycle within my mind... and I cannot get out of it. Yesterday morning we looked at John 3...the part about being reborn. When we were first born (physically), none of it was of our own doing. We didn't have the choice to be born or not, we didn't work to be born, we didn't suffer the pain of being born. Someone else did all those things for us so we can be alive today. Now, the only difference in being re-born (spiritually) is that we have a choice. But it's still someone else who does the work for us and has suffered the pain for us. We CAN'T do it. We try so hard after we've been re-born to act as though we are re-born. But it's still someone else that has given us life and continually provides that life for us. Knowing that automatically provides rest. God does not see us as miserable wretches that can't seem to get our acts together, including controlling the mind. It's only when I surrender my mind to Him, rest in the fact that HE is the one renewing it, HE is the one who has given me this life in the first place, and I don't need to think I should suffer for it because HE already did, and all that gives my mind a sense of peace and hope.

I think the sad part is that I so readily forget all of this... I forget the truth and instead focus on myself and try to figure it out all on my own. I will most likely forget again, but that doesn't make God love me any less, nor does it affect how He looks at me as someone whose sinful ways are washed away by His Son. Note to self: read this blog when that happens again!

I had a funny thought the other day. I’ve thought it before, but since I’ve been putting the hidden thoughts (or un-thought-about-thoughts) into words because I’ve had to at my placement, I thought about it in more up-front terms. I don’t know how people primarily consider God in their lives. Some people see Him as a father, some as Lord, some as a friend. I’ve always said He’s my companion. It’s true… He’s also my very best friend. But, I laughed at myself when I realized I think of Him as my conjoined twin. He’s obviously NOT my twin (or I’m obviously NOT His twin), but it’s the connection… the sense that you cannot go anywhere or be anywhere where He is not. As I let Him, He transforms my mind and my heart to be more like His. We share the same heart-set, the same mind-set as I let Him have more control.

And finally, as a friend told me to do earlier the day I started this posting, as I poured out my frustrated mind in unclear concepts (thanks again for being patient and listening), I decided to just enjoy… enjoy the time I get to spend with my family … enjoy the people around me… enjoy what God has given me. Forget my frustrations…leave them behind…leave them with God. Let Him renew my mind. Beg Him to renew my mind. Smile. Life revolving around the mind focuses a lot on moving on. Hard to do sometimes, but I decided to just enjoy what’s going on around me…enjoy my brother playing guitar in front of me, my sister petting my dog beside me, my mom picking up birthday cards off the table, and my dad sitting in the rocking chair discussing how to say “yes, dear” when my mom told him to take his brand new studded bike tires off the couch because they would poke holes in it all the while glancing through a sears catelogue admiring the kid toys. It’s nice when my family just sits around together!

Here are a few pictures of my family and the fun we have. (Umm...hold that thought for now... for now you'll just have to be held in suspense!)

On a last note, I would appreciate any prayers regarding having my mind in a place that is freeing and also pleasing to God. All Him…