Women’s Ministry Minute
May 7, 2020
With Dori Gayheart
Actual thoughts I’ve had since the stay at home order started:
I forgot to put sunscreen on my kids, “I’m a terrible Mom.”
A bunch of small things didn’t go as I planned, “Everything I do is wrong.”
I lost my patience with my kids, “I’m the worst.”
The grocery delivery service messed up my order, “I have failed my family”
After a week of this really negative self talk, I was feeling pretty crummy about myself. Once I start to think badly of myself, it’s pretty easy to find more and more things to criticize about myself. It wasn’t until the grocery service failed at delivering our groceries that I started to hear the lies in what I was thinking. The spirit has my back because as soon as I thought, “I have failed my family”, my next thought was, “That’s not true”. I immediately saw the ridiculousness of that thought. That was the moment that I finally realized that all of these negative thoughts weren’t true. Just seeing the lies was enough to stop the downward spiral of my thoughts.
Is negative self talk a new thing for me since physical distancing has started? No. As a stay at home Mom, I can be very hard on myself. It’s hard not to compare my family to other families and feel like I don’t measure up. What’s different now that we are physically distancing is that I now realize how much I rely on hearing other people tell me, “You’re a good Mom”, “You handled that situation with your kids so well”, “You’re doing such a great job with your kids”. I was relying on other people’s affirmations to make me feel better instead of dealing with the real issue of controlling my negative thoughts.
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3 For though we live in the world, we do not wage war as the world does. 4 The weapons we fight with are not the weapons of the world. On the contrary, they have divine power to demolish strongholds. 5 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.”
God gives me every weapon I need to stop my negative thoughts in their tracks. With his help I can demolish the lies and embrace the truth. I don’t have to allow my negative self talk to control my thoughts and emotions. I can choose to “take every thought captive and make it obedient to Christ”.
And I need to take it one step further. Even though I can catch myself in these negative thoughts, and I know they aren’t true, I can still be left with this downer feeling. I have to replace the negative self talk with new thoughts.
“8 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. 9 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”
If I can fill my thoughts with these things, then there will be no space left for lies and negative self talk. And although it’s still nice to hear that I’m a good Mom, I won’t need to rely on it because the God of peace will be with me.