fear

I saw this really cool picture of Queen Elizabeth II recently. It was when she was on stage at a Live Aid concert in 1985, and she was wearing these cutoff jeans and this short sleeved white t-shirt. Actually, it was sleeveless, and she didn't have a crown on, and she didn't even have a tiara or jewelry. She just looked so relaxed and so cool standing there on stage and ready to perform. I had never known that she had done this, so it was really, really impressive. I was very impressed, and she really got my respect going there.

The thing is it never actually happened. It was an AI generated image, and I thought for a moment that it was real. That's something that our brains can do to us. If you've ever judged yourself and scared yourself, wondering why you've had intrusive thoughts or thought of things that you really are repulsed by or felt that because you had some fleeting thought or negative feelings, unpleasant feelings, that you were somehow causing something awful to happen, I want to help you have peace today. You see, just like that image of Queen Elizabeth was not real, the way you feel about yourself when you judge yourself simply by the messages and the way that your brain and your feelings put the messaging together when they receive it, can be faulty pictures, not actual truth, not based on fact, just mere images, creations that we ascribe meaning to that you think you're seeing clearly when that's not actually the case.

So, here's the main point of all of this in today's podcast. When you think things, I want you to realize that while what you think may be fact may be true, there is no way for your brain to know the only thing that your brain can do is to make predictions and calculations based on information and experiences that it has had exposure to before. So, when you have thoughts, they are not actual things that need to be scary or need to be feared, they are simply chemical reactions. They're neurons firing. When you have feelings, same thing. It's nerve fibers, it's chemicals, it's energy. It is information that your body is encoding and decoding. That's all it is.

It is not truth. Now, it can represent truth and fact and figure that out. The way it can do that is from prior experience, ways that we've learned things before that we know to be true, such as there is gravity. We know that because we've fallen down, or someone taught it to us, or we read it in a book, right? We know things because we've tested them out, or because God's word says it, or because the Holy Spirit has told us. But we don't know things as absolute fact simply because we've perceived them. That could tell us something that isn't true, and we might confuse it with something that is true. Many times, when I work with clients who have thoughts that are intrusive or that they don't want, they fear that they are somehow some sort of deviant, or that they should be punished or put away because they can't believe that they had those thoughts and they're so awful and that couldn't be further from the truth. These are typically clients who are very decent people who want to serve the Lord and who just are very aware of how they don't want the awful feelings or the awful thoughts to hurt anybody.

It's actually the opposite of what they're thinking, but because they make a leap and associate negative thoughts or feelings, unpleasant thoughts or feelings, things that they would never want to think or to feel with a value judgment, they get confused, and then they get scared and get down on themselves. If that's you, I want to encourage you to remember this Queen Elizabeth AI generated picture. You see, I had different parts of information. I had what my eyes took in as I looked at the different parts of the picture. I had my context of what I knew about Queen Elizabeth II. I had my memory of the fact that there was a Live Aid concert or something similar back in the 80s. I was able to think, I can't actually tell if this is true or not, but what I was able to tell was that I was getting information and I was trying to figure out how to process it's meaning and to ascribe to it and figure out whether that picture was actually true or false. Then I put it against other information that I had, and that other information told me that the queen is not somebody who was into casual attire. She was someone who took the monarchy very seriously. Knowing that, I realized this is probably not true, because I used other information and backed it up with facts. I did know from experience, from learning, from prior exposure, and was able to make a more accurate picture.

They are no more real and true as value judgments and accurate pictures of who you are or how situations are than money is something of value. Listen to this. Money is something that has value because people ascribe value to it and put meaning towards it and know what it's worth, how to use it, what you can get for it, what you can do with it, but in reality, what is money? Money is paper. That's it. If we didn't ascribe value to this paper, these threads, this fabric, it would mean nothing. It would just be paper. Same with the chemicals. They're just chemicals. The neurons are just neurons doing their job with energy. It is what we learn to tell ourselves about the meaning and about the picture that we're seeing as we try to put the facts together, or what we perceive as the facts together that can sometimes cause us distress. That's why it's important to take every thought captive, put it against God's word, pray about it, be wise and discerning. Because if we just take it at face value, like I did, that picture of the queen, we might believe something that isn't true. No matter how true it feels, no matter how true it seems, no matter how scared we are of it, how curious we are about it, or how surprised we are, we're simply having a human experience of input and nerves and wiring that God created. There is absolute truth, but it's not something that we can tell right off the bat. Just like with an AI generated image of the queen at a concert, I had to run it through its paces and figure out how I could find what the truth actually was.

That's what I want you to think about. Whenever you have thoughts or feelings that are unpleasant or intrusive or you start feeling bad about yourself for having, I want you to realize that it's not a sin to simply have input or to simply have these chemical reactions. What you choose to do with the thoughts or what you choose to do with the feelings is where there's some substance of something that shows your character and shows what you believe in, what action choices you've chosen, and what you will do. Having the thoughts is just something that happens. Having the feelings is just something that happens. Putting meaning to them is something that happens, but putting meaning to them can be true or false, accurate or inaccurate, and it can cause you peace or it can cause you disturbance.

I've seen this so many times in the women that I've worked with, especially when I work with Christian women who really want to do the right thing and be pleasing to God in the way that they live their lives. These unpleasant thoughts or feelings can really, really cause them a lot of headaches. I want to just give you the understanding that you don't have to have a lot of disturbance because of the meaning that you ascribe to thoughts and feelings. They're just chemicals, reactions, nerves, fibers, energy, and they're your brain trying to sort through and figure out what's what. You get to determine through putting it against things that are true, like the Bible and prior experience, to figure out what you're going to do with it. That's something you can control, that's something you can choose, and that's something that you can take action in wisdom on. So just like that picture of Queen Elizabeth was not actually true, I could have ascribed meaning to it, but I might have been wrong. So, I needed to run it through the paces and tell myself what was actually true, not what seemed to be true.

If you're telling yourself things about yourself because you've had intrusive thoughts, disturbing thoughts, painful emotions, fears, and that you start to make the leap and think that things are going to go badly because you had some fear, or that things are going horribly wrong because you had a thought, I want you to realize those are distortions. There's not a cause and effect that is absolutely true. The only thing that is absolutely true is you're having information nation, and you need to put it against other stuff to determine what is true and what is false so that you can take every thought captive and learn to tell yourself the truth. It'll save you a lot of internal grief and disturbance, and it's something that can help bring you peace, hope.

Go take on the day.

Have you ever had a hospital "waiting" room experience? 

I've had several in my life, and I've found that the worst waiting experiences for me have been the waiting on news regarding how a surgery or other procedure has gone.  Waiting to hear if it's a boy or a girl, waiting for someone to be discharged, waiting for paperwork, or waiting for a procedure is fine.  But, waiting to find out if things are okay or not?  It's a prime time for thoughts to run amok... That's when the questions start to come... What if...?  What would...?  How will...?   

My husband needed a brain scan...an MRI...  Yikes, right?  It doesn't get much more "real" than when they want to take a look at what's going on up there!  Concern for whether or not a brain injury caused some eye related issues was the reason it was prescribed.  (In January, he had eye surgery, and they wanted to make sure there was nothing more serious going on than what he had already experienced.  So, he was in a tube with dye injected into him, and I was, well, waiting).

To keep my brain from imagining the worst, when, in reality, we did not know anything more than that he needed a scan, had had eye issues, God is in control no matter what, and we can trust Him, and that this was the extent of the "real/actual" information that we had at that point, I had to make a specific decision.  It was something I had to consciously choose to remember: