God's Truth or Familiar Patterns

 

What’s to be done about life’s ugly cycles of disappointment and loathing? Everyone has their own emotional tripwires that explode and render us helpless, incapacitated by thoughts of past failings. Those previous bad decisions can stack up chronologically like an encyclopedia of mistakes.

For me, past failures play out in my head like a bad movie I’ve seen too many times. It’s on a loop, reminding me of the poor decisions and lack of effort leading to increasing failures. If only I could find the stop button, or better still the delete button.

As a kid I remember walking out of baseball practice after getting shelled by a batter who zeroed in my fastball. Instead of figuring out what to change I plow ahead, angry, frustrated. All it took to knock me out was a patient hitter. Sports are perfect for exposing flaws in our character because competition is a cold hard teacher. We establish notions about ourselves early in life and getting over the false image we create is a big challenge. I’ve always envied those people who don’t obsess over loss of failure, I admire their ability to put difficulty behind them and move forward.  

I went fishing with my Dad this past summer. I never catch a lot except for carp (always the frigging carb) and usually spend the time trying to unsnag the line out of the tree branch sunk below the shoreline. Or we spend time changing bait and looking for a hole where the bass hide. I'm betting his lake is over fished because we’ve covered it multiple ways, it’s not that big. The poles and gear all his I just go along for the ride and try to watch a couple and real in just in time for the fish to flop off the hook. Dad likes to tie the line to the leader a particular way. I never quite figured it out, didn’t care too. But it’s supposed to be better so I watched him do it. I couldn’t get it after a couple of tries so I quit. I’m a kid in baseball practice again, not wanting to learn from coach. I’m too upset to learn how to throw the curve. Forget it, I quit. I don’t care anymore anyway. I can’t do it anyway what’s the use.

It’s a pattern I hate about myself, it’s childish. Every “failure” no matter how silly is a reminder of how I don’t measure up and never have. I guess it’s why the baseball reference is so apt. Whatever your first memory or failure or embarrassment is will haunt you like a blind spot, a red flashing light of embarrassment. When we don’t find out how to work through problems and solve them we find pathways around. We find side paths through the woods that push us further off the main trail. The issues don’t go away but they do define how we will interact with similar problems in life. Suddenly we’re on paths of our own making still heading in the right direction but avoiding a lot of the barriers we’re meant to climb. The familiar patterns determine our path.

I’ve seen avoidance play out in other areas of life from careers to house work. There is hope for change in everything but it takes recognizing the personal challenge and working towards improvement. How? First thing is to find a Bible verse that speaks to who you are as a person. You didn't think I was going to recommend another tiresome self help class did you? You have to know what God says about you and rest on that. Here is my power verse. It works every time. I'm replacing a negative with a positive.

“Being confident of this very thing, that he who began a good work in you will perfect it until the day of Jesus Christ” (Phillipians 1:6)

 You must repeat it to yourself whenever that attitude of self-loathing or depression or regret pops up and tries to drag you down. Say it out loud and repeat it as often as necessary until your mind is back on the path. Stop wandering around in the woods looking for your own way. God is with us wherever we end up, but His path is the one we walked away from while wallowing in failure. In other words, it’s a better idea than going alone and a lot less work.

As Christians we need to get used to fighting again; fighting the attacks on the mind and fighting to stay on the path. I’m convinced everyone has a personal battle rooted in past regrets or failure or cringe-worthy decisions. I can be so honest about it because struggle is a common to everyone. We have a way out. We can have victory through scripture that’s designed to change our thinking and renew our minds. It’s a life long struggle but we do get better at recognizing negativity and falling into familiar patterns. So when you feel that familiar "here we go again" self talk, take control and speak the Word over yourself. 

The idea is to replace false belief and insecurity with God's truth and show others how to do the same.

“All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, so that the servant of God[a] may be thoroughly equipped for every good work.” (2 Timothy 3:16-17)