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.
You see, feelings and thoughts are simply chemicals, neurons, nerve fibers, and energy.
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.
I have a love hate relationship with something and I want to share it with you. I don't know if maybe you feel the same way. You can let me know either way if you want to go to the Facebook group or on Instagram and send me a direct message that let me know. How do you feel about Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol? How do you feel about that? I have mixed feelings about it. Every year I have mixed feelings about it. I suspect I actually like it, but I don't. Whenever my husband says, oh, do you want to watch this? I'm like, no, I don't want to watch this, but yet I do. It's so bizarre.
Here's why: I do love the messaging. I do love the many versions that I've seen of A Christmas Carol. I've read the book. I've seen it with Jim Carrey. I've seen it with Henry Winkler. I've seen it with cartoon characters. I mean, I've seen a Christmas Carol and I've actually read the Dickens story. There's value in all of it. The story is not missed. The story being that how we live impacts people's lives and being generous and helping people impacts them. We can impact them for good or for bad. The way we live our lives matters. In the end, what do we want to be known for? What do we want to have accomplished?
This is good, deep stuff, especially for someone like me who has a therapy background where it's like, well, of course I love talking about the stuff that makes life really important and significant. I don't do small talk. I do deep talk. I really love deep talk. Yet this is dark and it's inspirational. It's like when I read Holocaust books not because I like reading about the Holocaust, but because I like reading about how the human spirit and faith in God and people under the direst of circumstances caring for each other is inspirational. It's both awful and inspirational. Dickens' A Christmas Carol is both dark and inspirational because life often has more than one feeling at the same time, more than one observation at the same time.
It got me thinking about if I'm feeling this way, where, oh, I remember these things of Christmas past that were so good and you might be too. If you're feeling nostalgia towards the things of the past and you are sad because they're not here today and you wish that they were, I want to encourage you that it can be both. It can both be that it's not like it was, and it can be that you can enjoy today as well. It can be that you can make good memories today for tomorrow, so when you or your kids or grandkids look back, they can see these were the good old days for them. That doesn't mean that the future days in their present or your present in the future won't be good for you too. Both can coexist.
I want to talk about that today in the sense that, just like with a Christmas Carol, I can have both a love/hate relationship with it. I can take the good from it, and I cannot like a lot of the stuff that makes me sad or want to cringe when I watch it, right? We can do that with our lives. When we look back and we think about how great things were or even how bad things were, I mean, some people did not have a great Christmas historically. If that's you, you can do this kind of in reverse of what I'm saying as well. You get to places where you look back and things either aren't like that now and you wish they were, or they're better now and you're glad they aren't like that.
What do we do with it when we feel like we're remembering something and it's bringing up something unpleasant, like longing or sadness or regrets or a hope for something that we can no longer have, like people to be with us that can't be here anymore. I want to encourage you to look at those things as something you can do something about in the present. Because when we get wistful, when we look back, we're forgetting that those things help contribute to who we are today. When you can see who we are today. Just like Scrooge, right? He was able to look back with the Ghost of Christmas Past and go, that's how I live my life. That's what led to this stuff. I can change it going forward. Well, it's the same thing with good stuff, but we can't get stuck in the past wishing for those good things and missing out on today's good stuff.
I want you to realize, just like with me and having both a love/hate relationship with A Christmas Carol, you can have both feelings. You can have feelings of nostalgia and longing and grief and loss and sadness. And at the same time, hope and excitement and new experiences and new traditions can await you as well. It's not the end of the story whether the past was good or the past was bad.
If it was good, you can carry it with you. Bring Grandma's favorite recipes to the table. Play a game like you used to play when you were a kid. Bring out the old movies for a little bit.
If it was bad, do something to gain what you didn't have back then. Maybe you didn't get toys, so take yourself out and get yourself something nice. Maybe you didn't have a church family, so go to a church service today. Maybe you didn't have supportive network, so find a support group somewhere.
Don't let the past or your emotions, whether positive or negative, whether abundance or lack, take away from the fact that you are a human being who can experience all of the awarenesses, positive and negative, good and bad, abundance and lack, and they can coexist. Today you get to acknowledge the fact that, yep, that's your experience. Simply part of the human experience, right?
The Bible says to forget the former things, God is doing a new thing. It also talks about remembrance, and I think that's indicative of a place for both leaving behind what is past and pressing forward to the goals in Christ Jesus, but also being informed. We have scripture to look back so that we know the story of where we came from and where we are today. Both are important, but it's the story that you and God are writing today that is where you have your power.
Don't be like the one relative that I have who lost her mom and then all of a sudden didn't go out for special occasions on holidays like, oh, no, I'm not going out. Her mother's the one who died. She acted like she did. She still had time to enjoy, and yet she wouldn't celebrate with anybody because she just wanted to stay home. I get that sometimes you feel like staying home, but this was almost like she set up a shrine and said, my mother died, so I can't go out for the holidays. I want to encourage you that that is not how you have to live. You can both honor somebody or honor a memory and bring the life they lived or the good things from the memory with you into the future or learn from it and do something with it in the present, in the future that makes it good or helps you remember or makes you feel better and honors somebody's memory without losing your present power, your present self. Because the future, when you look back, these are going to be the good old days or the days that you're like, oh, that was really rough.
What you do today becomes tomorrow's past. Just be real about it. It can coexist and that can give you peace. Because you don't have to try to pretend everything's perfect. You don't have to get everything perfect for the holidays. Holidays are not perfect. They're human things. Humans are involved in them; therefore, they're not going to be perfect. The fact that they are perfect is the fact that they're imperfect. We know that the holidays are going to have some highs and some bumps in the road, and that's okay. When we can accept that both exist and we don't have to get stuck, we don't have to make it like, oh, everything's ruined because the turkey got burnt. So what? That becomes a good memory.
Going forward, don't take yourself or life too seriously. Enjoy today and be wise about the story you tell yourself. It's not often either or. Highs and lows can coexist. Good memories and sad memories and present hopes and futures of hope can exist, as can stressors. It's okay to know that this is just part of the human experience. It doesn't have to throw me, but I can grieve when I need to, I can celebrate when I want to, I can remember as I wish, and I can move on and do new things. It's all healthy, flexible empowerment. I hope that helps lighten your load today for the holidays!
