The Good, the God and the Ugly by Kathy Vallotton

Author:Kathy Vallotton
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Personal Memoirs;REL012170;REL012040;REL018000
ISBN: 9781493430079
Publisher: Baker Publishing Group
Published: 2021-02-04T00:00:00+00:00

Thoughts That Matter

Kris and I had very different experiences in the same van that day because his soul was at peace and I was terrified. And although he kept reaching over to me during the entire ordeal to comfort me, I refused to be consoled. Instead, I chose to believe fear’s facts over Kris’s truth. Fear was a better salesman that day, and I purchased its kryptonite at the price of my peace.

After that ordeal, I determined that I would learn from my mistakes, and I tried to choose courage from then on. Yet I struggled with PTSD for a long time afterward. I panicked anytime someone drove too close to me on the freeway. My eyes were constantly looking in my rearview mirror as my mind replayed the chase scene over and over again. As time passed, I realized I was fueling the fire of fear with my own thoughts. My soul was stuck in a rut that kept drawing me back into fear.

One night when I was reading my Bible, I suddenly realized that I have power over fear. It was not as though I had not known the Scriptures before that. I had! But in that moment, 2 Corinthians 10:5 became so real to me. It says that we are to be “taking every thought captive to the obedience of Christ.” I could see clearly now that I had not taken my thoughts captive. In fact, it was I who was their captive!

How do I actually change my mind, get free and find peace? I read another Scripture, Philippians 4:8–9:

Finally, brethren, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is of good repute, if there is any excellence and if anything worthy of praise, dwell on these things. The things you have learned and received and heard and seen in me, practice these things, and the God of peace will be with you.

I began to think of “good thoughts” as soldiers on a peacekeeping mission, ready to fight for me at my beck and call. I viewed “bad thoughts” as an army of robbers and murderers trying to steal my peace and kill my joy. I learned quickly that I could deploy my good soldiers through divine meditation on God and His Word. When I considered the attributes of my “good thoughts,” I was readying my soldiers for war. And when I considered the impact that those “good thoughts” were having on my soul, I was unleashing my soldiers and commissioning them to destroy hell’s effects. But I had to learn to discipline myself to summon the right soldiers, which proved a little more difficult than I anticipated. Sometimes I would get confused and summon both the good and the bad. Consequently, a war would break out on the battlefield of my mind, resulting in a ton of anxiety in my soul.

Other times, it helped for me to imagine my mind as a canvas and my thoughts as “artists.”

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