BLOG: How much energy should I give it?

I've been thinking about this a lot lately. As someone trying to dig my way out of dark, heavy, depressive thoughts I've asked the following question many times: How much of what I get anxious about really deserves the energy?

The answer is, not much of it. Probably none of it.

I had my first child a week to the day after I turned 21. By the time I was 24, I had three little boys. Just before I turned 27, I had added my second daughter. Five children in the span of less than seven years was a lot to handle. My last three biological children came later down the road but the years between 20 and 30 were a whirlwind for me.

I was a nervous mother who desperately loved my kids and it propelled me to live in far too much fear that something would happen them. I developed unhealthy coping strategies and unintentionally carried them with me through the following decades. One such mechanism was to plan for disaster.

Seriously.

I was often home alone at night when my first five were young and I struggled with the weight of being prepared if something bad should happen. So I developed escape plans for if there was an intruder. Those plans varied depending on what door or window of the house the assailant entered. I had plans for a fire or tornado, too, but those are more normal and often considered wise. But planning out what you'd do if an attacker was coming for your children is not normal, healthy, or wise. I laughed about it back then. I thought I was epitomizing preparedness but what I was really doing was laying the foundation for what I've realized has been happening in my mind over the past few years.

I shared in this post about mental imagery that has been too much for me to handle. Our move to Thailand has felt dangerous from the outset, but as a good missionary, I believed I was supposed to embrace the dangers as part of the experience. But I couldn't ever get there so I really dug into my best skill set: preparing for disaster.

When the graphic images started rolling in my mind, I truly and genuinely believed I was being given a heads-up for how to respond when it actually played out in living color. So I wouldn't shut those thoughts and images and scrolling "videos" down. And I had no real concept of the stress I was causing myself by not doing so. Not until I had just about broken entirely.

The world puts a lot of emphasis on mental health. I believe our brains really can get to a place of being deeply unhealthy. I also believe, with the right changes and determination, mind health can improve just like physical health can. By the grace of a loving and patient God.

A month ago I was crawling into my bed continuously throughout the day and then, laden with shame, I would peel myself away from it for long enough to do what had to be done. But then the pull was too strong again. I'd be right back in the same spot trying to hide from everything I was thinking and feeling. One day I woke up and knew I had to do something or I was going to continue to spiral and possibly even get to the point of no return. I got back outside and started walking. Not fast and not even really for fitness. I was walking for my life. I walked so I wouldn't run toward destruction.

I started recording the walks I went on if I knew the distance would amount to anything significant, and I labeled them by the day. For instance, Day One Walk Two. If there was a day I missed getting an intentional walk (or two or three) in, I didn't start back at zero like a defeatest. I just kept going. If I walked on Day 24 but then missed 25, the following day would be Day Twenty-six Walk One.

Today is day 39.

Nothing intense or unsustainable. Nothing to panic my already overloaded mind. Just gentle habit-building and visible accountability. Walking may just be one way God is saving my eternal life because I almost always use the time to pray.

Spiritually I had gotten to a bad spot. I would read and listen to the Bible but then have no idea what I'd really read or heard. I started an audio Bible plan on January 1 and today is day 259 of it. I've kept going but there have been long stretches through it where I'd listen and be lost. Not because I wasn't focusing, but because my brain was resistant to retaining and processing. I was also reading from my physical Bible and having the same problem. Nothing was sticking.

I decided to try writing out what I was reading and I started at Genesis. As I've written out verse after verse, my mind has slowed, the scrolling images have all but stopped, and I've started retaining and understanding things. I've even noticed things in those familiar verses that I'd never really seen before.

God has honored and blessed my efforts in ways I'm unspeakably thankful for.

Small, simple changes. Huge impact.

The battle for the mind isn't fought once and then done. It's ongoing. And if the enemy has found a mind that is weak, he'll keep re-trying old tactics from new vantage points. He knows if he's broken us once, he can likely break us again in much the same way. And he's not wrong. In fact, he's dangerously right. Which is why we need to batten down the hatches and call in reinforcements.

In my own life that's looking like preparing for success instead of disaster.

I don't need to visualize all the things that can go wrong so I can respond like a girl scout. I need to have my mind so rooted in Jesus that when something goes well, I don't forget to praise Him for it. HE INHABITS OUR PRAISE! Praise is the antedote to worry and fear and discontent. Never mind the bad stuff. It'll always be there, waiting like a thorn ready to draw blood. Pay it no mind and at least you don't have to endure the struggle twice ... first in the mind and then in reality.

I feel like I've taken a thousand spiritual steps backward while I've fought this battle. But if that's what it was going to take for forward momentum to be gained, even the reverse of progress isn't wasted.

I'm sure I'll keep circling back to that question "How much of what I get anxious about really deserves the energy?" until I finally grasp what God really means by His many reminders not to fear. But what I do know, in this moment, is that God gave us this promise: “For God hath not given us the spirit of fear; but of power, and of love, and of a sound mind.” 2 Timothy 1:7

And when He says something, He means it.

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