What happens when you close your eyes and your mind goes blank?
What do you see?
What do you hear?
Can you sit in silence, with no thoughts, eyes closed, and have silence?
Confession: I can’t.
I’ve always been envious of people who can not think about anything; they don’t have a constant spiral of thoughts. They can close their eyes and just not think. Even when I say don’t think about anything, and I try, I have the thoughts of, I need to do this; why did you say that earlier; why are you standing like that; they don’t like you; they probably hate you; thoughts of things I made a mistake on weeks ago, months ago or years ago. It's a never-ending carousel of unwanted thoughts I can’t control. My capacity to endure these thoughts has increased as I have gotten older, but I still break down when I can’t turn off too many of the thoughts, but there is hope in God.
There is a verse in 2 Corinthians that gives hope for the future, hope that someday I will learn how to release these thoughts to God, The thoughts of bad memories, poor decisions, and the pressure I put on myself daily to do more than I am capable of. I am sure you’ve heard the verse before —We demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ. I’ve spent much time praying, praying that the thoughts would stop. I always come back to this one question as I am praying: how do you take your thoughts captive? I’ve always thought that taking thoughts captive would mean one day I was going to wake up and the unwanted thoughts that send me into a shame cycle would be gone, but that’s not it. God didn't promise that you wouldn't have unwanted thoughts but that you could take your thoughts captive by redirecting your mind to Christ. My prayers have changed from — God, please take this thought away to God, redirect my mind, and help me to focus on you, your love, your mercy, your grace, and your compassion. Remind me of the promise you have for us, and remind me of what you did on the cross.
How do you take your thoughts captive?