Every Monday we’ll post something about maintaining your sexual integrity. Hope it helps.
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Default to Darkness
God’s blessings flow this month like lava. My client load has nearly doubled in the past few weeks; I just spent the weekend in Roanoke with 540 awesome students from Young Life and Inter Varsity discussing sexuality and holiness; my beautiful wife is looking lovelier than ever; my oldest son’s career is forming; my youngest son is getting more paid gigs for his Christian band; our new roof just went up; I have a new book coming out this June and am finishing the first draft of yet another book project this week. As I write this, I’m flying home from Virginia to California in First Class, a section I normally creep past with the other peasants, because due to a flight mix-up I was upgraded. We’re even getting a dog soon, which ranks high on my list of “Yes!” items. So by rights, my mind should be a symphony of praise.
Why, then, when I’m alone and at loose ends, do I keep mentally dredging up the bully who made 2cd grade a misery? Or the pedophile who violated my eight year old body? Or the countless jerks – co-workers, professors, associates – who’ve insulted me over the years for no good reason? During this season of abundance, shouldn’t I instead be mentally relishing all that God’s provided and planned?
Obviously yes, and I do, I really do. But when my mind drifts, too often it defaults to the darkness, replaying scenes of pain – relationships that went wrong, or decades-old cruelties leveled at me or people I cared about, or humiliations. As the recipient of an abundant life, my focus should be on the abundance. Strangely, though, it instead veers to the negative, and even now I’m pondering why.
Partly, I think, we mentally replay old and unpleasant scenes from our past because we fantasize how we’d like to have handled these painful situations, in contrast to the way we really handled them. Instead of getting beaten up by the elementary school bully, I visualize my 7 year old self pulling an Uzi out of my lunchbox, pulverizing the tyrant, and riding a limo in the parade President Kennedy schedules for me and my adoring public. Instead of trembling in silence while a stranger exploits me, my 8 year old self kicks him in a strategic area, then lectures him on the destruction his behavior creates, leading him to abject repentance and a life of sacrifice in the Peace Corp. Remembering past traumas can be a way of envisioning how we wish we’d handled them, a rather childish but understandable mental exercise in memory revision.
But maybe there’s more. Maybe some weird part of me wants to give up, give in. If I concentrate on the amazing grace I’m shown so irrefutably, I can’t possibly justify throwing in the towel. But when I think on all that’s gone wrong in my life, whether self-inflicted or “other” inflicted, I’m given a pseudo-excuse for caving. And I’ve come to think that strange tendency, that illogical but noisy voice that keeps saying “Life’s futile, people are irredeemably cruel, I’m hopeless” wants validation, a validation I give it when I dwell on the ugly. It takes no exercise of faith to look at what is, and despair, so when I’m feeling too lazy to move my feet, much less mountains, and when I’m tired, bored or generally burnt out, thinking about how awful everything is provides me with some justification for quitting. I haven’t yet, nor do I plan to. But the thought pattern I am seeing clearly this week – the pattern of dredging up horrible memories and swimming in them – seems like an almost unconscious attempt at sabotage.
So in the interest of keeping it clean, I need to also keep it focused. What I dwell on today is going to largely influence my attitude, decisions, relations, everything. I have a choice to decide which channel to watch, so to speak, which movie to revisit and which one to delete.
Which is, I’m sure, a prime reason Paul tells us to think on “whatsoever things are pure, lovely, and of good report.” Purity is, after all, about more than resisting lust. It’s about purity of thought and focus, a decision to keep our minds fixed on God’s best rather than this world’s worst. And with a commitment to right thinking firmly in place, I can trust, with good reason, that however hard it might get, this is indeed the day which the Lord has made, and I will rejoice, and be glad in it.
Comments
apronheadlilly | Feb 11, 2013
Dennis Prager has a radio hour called the Happiness Hour, and every time I hear it, it bothers me. A lot! I understand his point, but sometimes it is so faking it to concentrate on the good and happy when to be "honest" is to see the darkness and sulk for a while. My disposition tends that way anyway when I'm not cracking jokes--I guess that sounds manic. But I think it is a way to feel sorry that things were not perfect and thus feel entitlement to be disatisfied now for any and every irritant.
Reframe: We must get over it and allow God to really grow us. I sometimes wish as computers crash and lose all their data that my excellent memory would also crash and dispose of all the parasitic pain moments. But keep the good--even the embellished good.
Joe Dallas | Feb 12, 2013
Oh, I love the idea of losing unwanted data. And "parasitic pain moments" is a term only a poet could come up with. I guess for me the real challenge is to focus on what is really good without pretending the bad doesn't exist, or that it doesn't bother me, and allow myself to grieve without dropping anchor there. And without letting my legitimate pain rip me off from enjoying all that's still available.
Denise | Feb 12, 2013
You have just described my biggest struggle a descent into darkness. In the current situation
of a very painful struggle my mind can overpower my entire thought process. If only this had
not happened or had I not sinned then maybe I would not be experiencing the current painful
situation. My mind tends toward well God must be punishing me for past sins (that I know were wiped clean when I accepted Christ over 30 years ago) I work at resetting and changing
my thoughts, however, the darkness continues to creep in. Where is God's grace? This is a tough battle and makes you so weary. So I deliberately each day to keep my eyes on Jesus, however, the why God continue to creep in and sabotage my thought process. Thank you for writing this article so clearly and giving additional insight.
peaceluvr | Feb 12, 2013
I sometimes need to grieve the bad things that happened to the little girl I was. I need to grieve the innocence lost to evils in the world and to thank God that even tho the child I was had no choice but to indure the pain, humilitian and the suffering, I have been cleansed by the blood of Jesus and I must forgive what was done to the child I was, just as Christ has forgiven me. I need to go back to love that child and to stand up for children who need standing up for now! I need to understand.
Dave | Feb 12, 2013
i too have been disturbed most of my 55 year old life with rehashing traumatic or bothersome past events. I am 7 months into counseling and a support group for sexual addiction in Colorado. I am working on step 7 of a 12 step program, and am as ready as I can be to humbly ask Jesus remove my shortcomings.
When I rehash I actually have such a strong emotional response that I can loose control of myself for up to several minutes. My wife is also disturbed when this happens, but says they're getting less frequent and shorter in the last year. I get tense from my face on down, I clench my fists, and if the remembered event causes anger, I go into a silent internal rage.
I hope that this(these) part(s) of me will stop riling me up so much. I will 'fight the fight' with these memories, but hope that they continue to lessen as I strive for and receive healing.
I don't like them!
Charlie Hernandez | Feb 12, 2013
It's so refreshing to find a place of solitude in which we can vent that we are, without a doubt, human but relentless in our sticking to our decisions to follow Jesus. In a world that revolves around extremes with religious contradictions and shallow explanations, we can find comfort in the power of a loving God that speaks thru men and women with a solid walk with God but with a true heart that acknowledges their weaknesses.
I am encouraged to keep just placing one foot in front of the other, and not grumble about the "P' word (process).
Our hope is that one day we will see Him face to face and none of this will ever matter anymore!
John Henson | Feb 10, 2014
I find it odd that reading about this draw toward darkness is encouraging to me. I guess it helps me not to take myself too seriously. Yes truly horrible things have happened to me and lots of other folks. But here I am, still breathing and still living in an era of grace ever since I accepted Christ 33 years ago. Come to think of it that's probably why the enemy of my soul is motivated to hurt me in the first place. Just tonight I was also grieving things wrong and sad events in my life. There are too many. And yet, could it be that I'm still capable of being a threat to the enemy? Why else wouldn't he leave me alone?
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