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.
~ II Corinthians 10:5 NIV84
Whoa. Chapter 12 came at me like a runaway truck, just at a time when I was struggling with the very things Lysa talks about in this chapter. I was reading sections out loud to my husband, saying "I feel exactly like that so often!"
Lysa wrote, "Have you ever been in a situation in which something small feels really big?" Why yes I have. And she also cautions that if we are not careful, "these misguided feelings can distract us, discourage us, and trigger past pain to start taunting us."
Okay. Nail. Head. Me. I have shared on here before my struggles with being a people pleaser. Well, hand in hand with that little dysfunctional personality trait comes what I like to call "talker's/doer's remorse." I have a fairly self-destructive habit of second-guessing my words or actions, after the fact. I overthink, sometimes to a ridiculous degree, something I said or did, wondering if perhaps it was rude, or insensitive, or if I didn't really make myself understood well, or if the person is angry at me, or any number of other scenarios where I should have said more, or less, of different, words. I dissect conversations, looking for places where an expression on someone's face or a subtle tone in a remark or some passive-aggressive hint would tell me that I had screwed up royally and needed to make amends or fix it somehow. Sometimes I do go back and offer an apology for any misunderstanding or hurt, and in most cases the person seems genuinely puzzled that I thought there was a problem. But of course every now and then there really was a hurt or angry feelings, so when I begin the "remorse" cycle, well you get the picture. In the case of doer's remorse, I often think, after the fact, oh I wish I'd done this, or wouldn't it have been great if I'd thought to do this, or oh Lord I should not have done that. I don't think on my feet well in social situations and when that happens, the "shoulda, coulda, woulda" is soon to follow.
Earlier this week, I was sinking in a bog of past regrets to the point that I was feeling blue and depressed for a couple of days. That's about 36 hours longer than I usually wallow in misery about stuff. Usually I wallow a while, then I self-talk myself back into my happy place. But this week, for some reason I just could not climb out. My poor patient husband, who is a great listener and sounding board, was at a loss as to how to help me. He is not a person who struggles with regret very often, and he just could not understand why I was mourning over every little thing I felt I had messed up since we'd been married (at least I'm sure it seemed that way to him).
And then I read this chapter. At exactly the right time. And then I read over it again, along with the final chapter in the book. And those two chapters together = light bulb time for this girl.
Usually I am totally imagining any problematical scenarios that have arisen (only in my little mind in most cases) from my verbal blunder or social faux pas. But I will worry about it and beat myself up and overthink and analyze and just chew it to death, feeling that somehow, again, I have failed.
There are times when I will just hop on that wheel of regret and spin until my eyes roll back in my head, thinking back over decisions I've made that I regret, choices that should have been different, things about the way I raised my kids that I now realize I could have done so much better, things said and unsaid to my parents, who are both now gone, words said in anger to my husband . . . you get the idea. It is a vortex of doom and gloom that can suck you down and make you feel like the biggest failure in the world.
When I was thinking about this blog post and trying to come up with a title, I remembered something that I heard in an evening worship time on a youth group mission trip in 1999 (I remember the year because it was my daughter's last mission trip during the summer just after she graduated high school). This statement had such a profound effect on me that I wrote it in my Bible, and when I got home, I typed it up on small pieces of paper, framed it and kept one for me and gave one to several friends I was going through a leadership class with at church. It sits on a shelf above my desk at work, and I realized as I was writing this that, along with the scripture from 2 Corinthians, I need to be reading this and claiming it as truth, every day, so that I can free myself from the captivity of regret:
The Truest Thing
The truest thing about me
Is always what God says
Not what I think or feel
Not what others say or do
The truest thing about me
Is always what God says
So simple. And yet so full of the truth of God, the truth of scripture, the truth that we need to cling to when we are tempted to beat ourselves up, and when we hop on that crazy wheel of regret and failure.
Remember The Truest Thing about YOU is ALWAYS what God says. Always.
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