Heavenly Homemakers

Encouraging women in homemaking, healthy eating and parenting

Lord, Get Me Off This Crazy Brain Train

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All aboard! Who’s with me? We’re heading south toward Crazy, passing through Unproductive, Distracted, and Terribly Unpleasant along the way.

Lord! Get me off this Crazy Brain Train!

Do you know what’s great about women? We are multi-taskers. We can get things done like nobody’s business. Our brains are wired to think about what to make for dinner – while we’re switching out laundry, while we’re on the phone setting up an appointment, while we’re watching the kids to make sure they are safe. This is a gift! God made us this way!

Satan though. He’s a sly one. He likes to take what God did and flip a switch – just a tiny one – to mess up what God created perfectly and turn it into something miserable. He makes it seem okay, or at the very least, he makes it easy for us to shift the blame to others so that we not only justify our actions and attitudes – we don’t even recognize them for what they are: sinful.

So hello, fellow multi-taskers. Praise God with me for the gift He’s given us to be able to think of so many productive and meaningful thoughts at the same time. But be on guard with me, too. This unique and blessed gift often causes more anxt, worry, and fear than godly productivity. I can make breakfast, plan dinner, be mad at my husband, be worried about my teenagers, and re-play a conversation with a friend that’s bothering me – all at the same time. This is multi-tasking in a gruesome form.

The noise is deafening – turning my focus in eight different directions at the same time – none of them focused upward. I hear the battles raging for my mental energy to dwell on what I can not change. I groan inwardly at all I wish I would have said and what I hope she heard when we visited. I look ahead four years and try to create the impossible. It’s loud here. It’s confusing. It’s physically exhausting.

The Crazy Brain Train. We have got to get off.  Don’t even wait for the next stop. Just take a huge breath and jump. You’ll be safe. What? Like it’s any better aboard the train? What holds us here? Do we enjoy the crazy?

Take Every Thought Captive

You know how we gain knowledge of God? We read His Word.  Like we need food and water – we devour everything He has to say. We feast on it with our very breath. His Truth becomes our life. Our sustenance.

You know how we demolish arguments and every idle thought that wants to make itself more important than the words the Father is trying to tell us? We take the thought captive.  We stop the thought in its tracks. We drop-kick it in the name of Jesus. We listen to God’s voice – the voice we can only hear when we get rid of the other noise and listen to His – strong and clear. We replace the ugly, unproductive thoughts with Truth.

His Truth silences the crazy.

“…Let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles. And let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us. Let us fix our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith…” Hebrews 12:1-2 (read the whole chapter!)

Hearing too much noise and not able to hear God? Look up!!  Fix your eyes on Jesus. Let the Lord take you off the Crazy Brain Train so that you can enjoy the Peaceful Heart He is waiting to give you.

Still multi-tasking? You bet. We’re killin’ it, knocking out everything on the to-do list God calls us to do. But our hearts and minds are at peace. We’re using this gift, and we’re doing it right – with our eyes fixed on Him.

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Think About Such Things

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How easy it is to read scripture, love it, be fed by it, get a happy feeling from it, find God right there in it…then close the Book, walk away, and forget to live by the Truth we just read.

Don’t kick yourself over it. We’re never going to “arrive.” We’re human. We are fighting an enemy who wants nothing more than to see us struggle. He knows enough about us to know our weak points, and that’s exactly where he fires his arrows.

That’s why we eagerly read this read this…

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. 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. Philippians 4:8-9

Great scripture, right? It’s one of my favorites. Indeed, we can read it, love it, be fed by it, get a happy feeling from it, find God right there in it, and commit to focus here. But before we know it, we’re living like this:

Whatever is bothering you, whatever you’re worried about, whatever you have no control over, whatever makes you angry, whatever hurt your feelings, whatever made you sad, whatever may or may not happen, whatever is in the past that you can’t change…think about such things. Whatever you’ve seen and tried that doesn’t work, keep doing it and remain in that rut of despair. And overwhelming hopelessness will hold you in bondage.

Been there? Me too. It’s painful, pointless, and far too easy to remain in that ugly circle of anxious thoughts that serve only to keep us from peaceful rest in Christ.

It really is possible to re-train our thought life so that we drop-kick the negativity and worry. We definitely don’t want to stay in this camp, right? It is not fun here. It’s cold, muddy, and it rains all the time. There’s no joy in the prison of fear. Bleh. Get me out from under this dark cloud of self pity and bitterness.

And Jesus says, “Yes! I’d be happy to. In fact, I already did. I’m right there with you, everywhere you go. Turn your focus to Me. I am love. I am peace. I am joy.”

Because of the strength we gain when we take our weaknesses to the cross, we’ve got this! It takes the power of prayer. We have to intentionally stop the negative, pointless thoughts that want to take over our minds, take them captive, and make them obedient to Christ. (2 Corinthians 10:5)

Because of Jesus, we are living in victory! Remembering this truth sets our hearts free to focus on all that is true, noble, right, lovely, pure, admirable, excellent, and praiseworthy.

Think About Such Things

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Peace

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If you haven’t already, you may want to go back and read Raw, Guilt , Beginning, Anxiety, Seek, Stop, Pride, and Surrender before reading this post.

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I longed to hold onto and remain in control of my life. But the truth was, the control that I longed to hold onto was actually controlling me. It had its grip around my chest and would not let me breathe with all of the fear and panic it created inside of me. Once I learned to surrender my self to Jesus – that is when I was able to enjoy His gift of peace.

Realizing this was glorious, and then I lived happily ever after.

Oh how I wish that happily ever after was the end of the story. I wish that recognizing the need to surrender fully to the Savior, letting go of self, and embracing His peace would keep me always and forever where I needed to be in my relationship with our Creator. But here’s what I am learning:

  • We are to take up our cross daily.
  • We live in a world that fights for our flesh and against all that is good and right.
  • Our journey will never be over – until we meet Jesus face to face.

Learning to surrender myself and my sin to Jesus was a huge breaking point. It was one Satan didn’t like. It was one I was quite inexperienced with. After all, I’d had a solid three dozen years of practice holding on very tightly to control and selfishness. Surrender? I just learned this. Peace? I like it. Now, how do I hold on to this feeling?

Ah, the feeling of peace. It’s great, isn’t it? But what if I told you that my time studying the Word has taught me that peace isn’t a feeling? I always thought it was. “I just don’t feel peace about this,” we say. “Ah, I love how peaceful it feels here.”

God has taught me that peace is not a feeling. Peace is a fruit of the Spirit. Peace is a gift (Psalm 29:11).

When we surrender our sin, our selfishness, our fear, our anxiety to Jesus – He replaces them with His peace. But only if we choose to accept this gift.

See, once we let go of something we’ve been holding onto for a very long time, there is a sin-sized hole in that place in our hearts. This is what I found in myself – a huge hole that had been overflowing with anxiety and fear. God was helping me to recognize this and to rid it from my life, but then what? God said, “Here, now accept this gift of peace that I’ve been longing to give you. Let my peace fill that hole.”

I then had to reach out and accept it. The Spirit fills that hole, and the fruit that bubbles forth out of that space is all that He has been longing to become in our lives.

I loved this. I found myself experiencing the beauty of the Father and the work of the Spirit in my life in ways I had never experienced. It was glorious. But only if I continued to recognize that I could never take my self back. That the hole Jesus had filled left no room for anxiety. That peace and fear can not co-exist. If I chose to grab hold of fear again, my clumsy arms could not also hold onto peace.

I began to struggle with how to juggle. How to hold onto this blessed gift of peace I was beginning to experience. How to continue to surrender myself and not take my self back.

The difficulty then turned to this:  Thanks to God, I was learning, growing, and healing. But now I didn’t know who I was anymore. All my life I’ve been the Go!Go!Go! girl and the anxious person, and the drop-everything-for-friends friend. I understood that I was becoming a new person. But what exactly was that supposed to look like? And how was I supposed to act? And who was I supposed to serve? I found myself crying,  “Who am I, Lord?!”

Continue reading: Empty

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