Look up! 🌟 For my friends that see the glass as half empty, because the pain and trials are so obvious not because you’re pessimistic like others tell you… but because you empathize from your own life experiences and want to be a helper!
PAUSE and take a look around!
I looked up from my computer working and saw these leaves out of the playroom window. 🙌🏻 It was just the perspective shift I needed to get out of some mind traps.
Swim up out of the glass of water you’ve jumped into, trying to take control of situations and look out!
My mind is constantly in training to RENEW things that have been said or bad thoughts I have let take root. Today… it just took looking up at the leaves to see a good and perfect picture in changing seasons. It’s only in the TESTING of my mind against what God says that I can see and believe what is good, perfect, and acceptable to be thinking on…
How are your thoughts lately?
Here’s a little game I play when thinking on something bad…
y’all it can get crazy in my mind! Like all of a sudden I’m dreaming in the day that something horrific has happened to my kids or what if I lose it all or who has my name negatively on their lips and so many “if’s” that I’m checking out of reality to see what’s good!
Take those thoughts CAPTIVE! Snatch it like you would if someone was trying to take your kid away. Your precious child, wouldn’t you fight for them? Wouldn’t you use all your force and might to keep them in the protection of your grasp so they wouldn’t be taken by danger?
YOU are so precious that you can forge the process of capturing your crazy, dark, negative mind thoughts.
Step 1: capture that thought. Don’t let it run away and have it’s way affecting your mood and diverting your attention from reality.
Step 2: Notice things around you that are real: “my kids are healthy, God has recently blessed me in a way only He could do, I am safe, I am not a sum of what someone else believes.”
Step 3: Repeat. Repeat. Repeat.
Negative thinking is why memorizing scripture is so important to me! I write down verses that combat those thoughts and reference as needed and they stick into my mind and are written in the depths of my heart until the captive thought no longer has free reign.
I know I’m not alone in negative thinking (of reality or completely made up scenarios).
What do you do that helps?
In Christian talk, we might say “write these Words on your heart” What that means to me is sticking these TRUTH filled words that have withstood the times, that are God breathed- meant just for me to read and hear from God- so deeply into my mind that it affects my heart.
To the Hebrew people of Bible times, the heart was more than just an organ. “They thought of the heart as the organ that gives physical life and the place where you think and make sense of the world—where you feel emotions and make choices.” Bible Project.
Here are some verses to get you started writing on your heart.
How precious to me are your thoughts, O God! How vast is the sum of them!
Psalm 139:17 ESV
We destroy arguments and every lofty opinion raised against the knowledge of God, and take every thought captive to obey Christ…
2 Corinthians 10:5 ESV
The Lord is near to the brokenhearted and saves the crushed in spirit.
Psalm 34:18 ESV
Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect.
Romans 12:2 ESV