Because grief occurs in the mind, I'm sharing a post for one of my other books, Imagine the Future You
Controlling our
thinking:
IT'S OK TO TALK TO
YOURSELF
By Ada Brownell
Author of the book, Imagine the Future You
FREE JANUARY 25 AND 26
You've seen the commercial. Mom washed her teenager's new
jeans, causing a crisis.
"My life is over," the young gal says.
She couldn't be serious, we think. Yet, when I became the
new teacher of a high school Sunday school, I contacted all who had attended in
the past. Before he had time to receive the card, one of them was dead. The
young man hung himself from a tree in his parents' front yard. I heard the kid,
whose parents had money for booze and cigarettes, killed himself because he had
nothing but holey sox to wear.
In preaching about suicide a few weeks later, our pastor
emphasized suicide almost always comes as the result of a suggestion from
Satan.
But
we don't have to listen to the devil. We can capture evil thoughts and refuse
to allow them to live our minds. The
Apostle Paul wrote, "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 (2 Corinthians 10:5).
If you don't want to be depressed, change the
way you talk to yourself, advises Christian psychologists Frank Minirth and
Paul Meier, authors of Happiness is a
Choice. "All of us go through each day talking to ourselves in our
thoughts. We either talk in a positive or a negative, critical tone."
What had the boy said to himself before he
climbed up that tree with a rope? "I can't face those kids at school
anymore?" Or, "Nobody cares about me anyway?"
What if he'd thought like my stepbrother,
Clarence, who started out in his early teens asking people if he could have
their old broken bicycles? He figured out how to fix them, probably at first cannabalizing
parts from one old bike he could put on another, and using old paint from my
Dad's garage. Then he sold the repaired bicycles. In no time he had a
profitable business, at least for someone his age.
Although changing our thinking patterns is not
easy, it can be done. "The scripture promises that negative thinking can
be changed to positive thinking," says Jerry H. Schmidt, author of Do You Hear What You're Thinking?
He gives a number of scriptures, among them
Romans 12:2, "Don't copy the behavior and customs of this world, but let
God transform you into a new person by changing the way you think. Then you
will learn to know God's will for you, which is good and pleasing and
perfect" (New Living Translation).
Another one is, "If there is anything
worthy of praise, think on and weigh and take account of these things—fix your
minds on them. Practice what you have learned and received and heard and seen
in me. And model your way of living on it, and the God peace—of untroubled,
undisturbed, well-being—will be with you" (Philippians 4:6-9 Amplified
Bible).
Beyond that, we need to decide to
believe in ourselves and in the God who created us. Jesus told us to "Love
the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your
mind and with all your strength," and "Love your neighbor as
yourself." (Mark 12:-31). That implies we are to love ourselves, too.
Then believe this scripture, "I can
do all things through Christ who strengthens me," (Philippians 4:13).
If you need to, talk to yourself about
it!
