Told by FennySometimes a thought goes round and round in my head, faster and faster. Daisy showed me how to stop it.
It usually starts out harmless. I’m lying in my basket, and suddenly it’s there: the same thought as yesterday. The thought tells me that I do everything wrong. I push it away, and it comes back. I think about something else, and it goes round once more. At some point I’m sitting in the middle of a merry-go-round that spins faster and faster, and I can’t find the stop button.
When I told Daisy about it, she didn’t tell me to just stop thinking. She said: “Tell me what God says.”
A thought doesn’t get truer just because it’s loud
That was the first sentence that helped me. A thought that keeps coming back starts to feel like a fact after a while. It’s so familiar, we’ve heard it so often, that we don’t check it anymore. But repetition doesn’t make anything true. A song you can’t get out of your head isn’t the best song in the world because of that.
Paul writes that we can bring “every thought into captivity” ✦2 Corinthians 10:5✦. That sounds exhausting at first. I understand it like this: You don’t have to believe every thought that knocks on your door. You can stop it, look at it and ask: Is that even true?
One small step for today
Daisy showed me a trick that really helps. Write the thought down on a piece of paper. Next to it, write what God says about you.
Mine looked like this. On the left: “I do everything wrong.” On the right: “I am fearfully and wonderfully made” ✦Psalm 139:14✦. On the left: “Nobody wants me.” On the right: “He who comes to me I will in no way throw out” ✦John 6:37✦.
On paper, the loud thought suddenly looks pretty small. It has no reasons, only volume. And when it comes back, you can look at your paper and you already know what to answer.
Paul also gives a list of where we can turn our thoughts: to “whatever things are true, whatever things are honorable, whatever things are just, whatever things are pure, whatever things are lovely” ✦Philippians 4:8✦. That isn’t a call to pretend problems away. It’s an invitation to send the merry-go-round in a different direction.
Jesus speaks into the storm
There’s a story I especially love, because there’s a storm in it as wild as the thoughts in my head. Jesus and his disciples are on the lake in a boat when “a big wind storm” arises and the waves are already crashing into the boat ✦Mark 4:37✦. Jesus is asleep in the stern on a cushion. The disciples wake him, full of fear: “Teacher, don’t you care that we are dying?” ✦Mark 4:38✦
He awoke, and rebuked the wind, and said to the sea, “Peace! Be still!” The wind ceased, and there was a great calm.
The Greek word for “be still” is phimoō, and literally it means: to put a muzzle on. As a dog, that makes me smile a little. Jesus puts a muzzle on the storm. He uses the same word when he silences an evil spirit ✦Mark 1:25✦.
Whatever is raging inside you doesn’t get the last word. The thought that has been telling you for days that you’re worthless is loud. But Jesus is louder. And after his word there’s no emptiness, but “a great calm”.
A steadfast mind
When the merry-go-round is spinning, I like to pray a verse from Isaiah. I don’t have to achieve anything for it, only look to where the peace comes from:
You will keep whoever’s mind is steadfast in perfect peace, because he trusts in you.
In Hebrew it literally says shalom shalom, “peace, peace”. That’s how the Bible stresses something that really holds: perfect peace.
My merry-go-round still spins sometimes, by the way. But now I know where the button is. And Daisy sits next to me and asks: “What does God say?”
Bible quotations: World English Bible (public domain). Source on phimoō: Bible Hub, Strong’s 5392.
