Turning the Page

Your Rehearsal can Change your Mind

Our self-talk can keep us depressed and anxious, but we can learn new thinking tracks. Your rehearsal can change your mind.
I always marvel at how the experts seem to effortlessly do something that I would difficult.
My earliest experience of this was watching shearers shear our sheep on the sheep farm I was raised on. I would be mesmerized by the smoothness and speed by which a fleece would be removed.
He had done this over and over again. Rehearsed and practiced the skill repeatedly. There was speed, but there was also a gentleness and fluidity to his movements that seemed to come so naturally. Like he was born with a shearing handpiece in his hands.
He had created muscle memory. He had created thinking tracks in the brain that were automatic. He could have done it blindfolded.
 
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Don’t be afraid, for you are very precious to God.

We see things, hear things, experience change, and become afraid. But when we know we are precious to God, a deep peace can come and flood us with strength.  
It was only a couple of words, and I felt stronger.
Words can cut, hurt, and harm, but they can also bring a deep sense of security.
Words can speak healing into pain like nothing else.
Your dark tunnel
There can be times in life where it feels like you are going through a dark tunnel.
There is a sense of abandonment and deep loneliness. Tiredness hangs off you like a wet towel. It's enough to give up any sense of hope altogether.
And if you've been there a few times before, it seems like the brain has a fast-track off-ramp to this place.
Any little struggle catastrophizes you into this dark place with incredible speed. You somehow 'pull yourself together' and regain some footing, but you know it's there, ready to swallow you up at a moment's notice.
You're vulnerable. Walking on the edge of a cliff, knowing even a tiny breeze of struggle could tip you over.
 
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The intervention

Caged By the Opinions of Others

Others’ opinions about us can lead us to feel we are caged. Trapped, we grow in fear and worry, but recognizing them and boldly stepping out of the cage can bring us into new freedom.
I could feel myself slipping into the dark place of despair again.
As is my habit these days, I quickly ran to grab my Bible and said a quick prayer to counteract the negative thoughts.
Growing up, I was a bubbly and outgoing toddler. However, from the age of 6, I had turned into a bookworm.
My mother could not explain my sudden social anxiety and just brushed it off as a phase I would outgrow. However, as I grew older, my love for reading also grew. When I got hold of a book, I never wanted to set it back down until after reading. So great was my love for reading I would sometimes forget to eat or shower once I started reading a new book. 
In my culture of Zimbabwe, children are supposed to enjoy being on the streets and playing games with their peers. My mother would try and help me make friends, calling out to children who were my age to invite me if they had any fun activities planned. 
Now that I look back to those days, I loved books, and like my mother and father, I enjoyed reading anything in print, especially novels. However, reading was my way of escape, and I could see the world through a different lens by immersing myself in the characters of the novels I was reading.
My parents were a comfortable middle-class couple, with my dad working at a mine and my mother a stay-at-home mom. 
After having three children, she decided to go back to school and eventually college. As is custom, we would bounce around relatives’ houses while my mother was at school. 
 
Others’ opinions about us can lead us to feel we are caged. Trapped, we grow in fear and worry, but recognizing them and boldly stepping out of the cage can bring us into new freedom.
I could feel myself slipping into the dark place of despair again.
As is my habit these days, I quickly ran to grab my Bible and said a quick prayer to counteract the negative thoughts.
Growing up, I was a bubbly and outgoing toddler. However, from the age of 6, I had turned into a bookworm.
My mother could not explain my sudden social anxiety and just brushed it off as a phase I would outgrow. However, as I grew older, my love for reading also grew. When I got hold of a book, I never wanted to set it back down until after reading. So great was my love for reading I would sometimes forget to eat or shower once I started reading a new book. 
In my culture of Zimbabwe, children are supposed to enjoy being on the streets and playing games with their peers. My mother would try and help me make friends, calling out to children who were my age to invite me if they had any fun activities planned. 
Now that I look back to those days, I loved books, and like my mother and father, I enjoyed reading anything in print, especially novels. However, reading was my way of escape, and I could see the world through a different lens by immersing myself in the characters of the novels I was reading.
My parents were a comfortable middle-class couple, with my dad working at a mine and my mother a stay-at-home mom. 
After having three children, she decided to go back to school and eventually college. As is custom, we would bounce around relatives’ houses while my mother was at school. 
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Thanksgiving Requires Taking Notice. A Bible Story

We often miss the obvious, but when we stop and take notice of the changes, we have but one response – thanksgiving.
I noticed something about them. They had changed, and it was for good.
Something deep had happened in them. Instead of being so caught up in the emotional washing machine swirl of life, there was a kind of steadiness to themselves.
Nothing really had changed much in their circumstances. It was still a struggle. They still had moments of crying out to God for relief, but there was definitely something different about them.
Something had changed down deep, and it was growing a rock solidness in them. I noticed it.
There was an invite for thanksgiving.
When I mentioned it to them, they looked kind of puzzled, but they also knew what I was talking about.
They couldn’t describe it that well other than it was like having a deeper confidence in themselves and who they were. It’s the kind of knowing that you only get by going through a storm and coming out the other side.
It’s an internal change that is now unshakeable—a solidness to their soul.
It was the solidness that they could build out from.
In this noticing, I suggested we give thanks.
 
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To Reap in Joy you Need to Sow in Tears

The only way there is through. To reap a joy, we sow a tear, but it’s work, hard work, so we don’t travel alone. We journey with safe others.
I knew there had to be an ocean of loss behind the lifestyle mask they were wearing. For all the stories of trauma, they had managed life quite well. Everything in its place, compartments for this and that, and rooms of memories best kept locked and securely walled up. Everything was under control, supposedly.
But just like a camel carrying too many straws, this last one, small as it was, was the one that broke the camel’s back.
They were exhausted from the weight of keeping everything together. Their body was beginning to break down. It couldn’t cope with the load. It was never meant to.
They needed to cry.
It was only a couple of words, and the tap began to turn.
‘How are you?’
Apologies made quickly. Composure snatched, but the facade had cracks, and the face was awash.
 
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Change can feel like Being on the Wrong Side of the Road

If you always do what you’ve always done,you’ll always get what you’ve always got.Henry Ford.To change, it may feel like you’re driving on the wrong side of the road.
It all made sense.
I began to understand how the brain changes and that to learn something new will often feel you’re going against everything you believed to be true.
Like learning to drive on the wrong side of the road.
It takes time and persistence, but in the end, you will get there
Part of the change process is learning how to drive on the supposedly wrong side of the road to which you usually do so.
The priority of your feelings are to be safe and comfortable,but the divine priority for your life is to risk and grow.Which will it be? David Riddell
 
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From One Thousand Gifts to Three Thousand Gifts and Counting

Moments of thankfulness often pass us by without acknowledgment. But what might happen if we create a habit of noticing and capturing them. From one thousand gifts to three thousand gifts and counting.
This is a Guest Post from Pauline Turnbull.
It all began on the 24th of October 2020 when I took up the challenge of writing down one thousand gifts I could thank God for. 
I had been reading 'One Thousand Gifts: A Dare to Live Fully Right Where You Are' by Ann Voskamp.  
To date, it is precisely one year from the day I wrote my first GIFT. 
Barry's invitation to write this post is listed in my book as Gift# 3,001, after naming Gift# 3,000 as a thank you to God for each of those 3,000 gifts. 
So today, I opened my notebook and went back to where my gift counting began.
As I scan the pages, I am reliving the gifts I've numbered. These are sacred moments of grace and love that God has given to me.
 
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For Mental Health You May Need a Wire Brush

Something new had to happen, and it could, but it would take a wire brush to shift the bark. So we submit to the master gardener.
As I came to winter prune this old rose, I said a prayer.
‘Creator God, guide me as I prune. As I cut and snip, wire brush and bend, cause new growth to fill the world with your beauty and purpose.’
Ok, it may not have been so poetically put together like that, but it was the intent of my heart.
After cutting and snipping much of last season’s growth away, I reached for my bright yellow handled wire brush. Normally used for brushing the rust off steel, this was now to be used on a plant, a living thing, a rose, in fact—the queen of the garden.
I always slightly cringe when I come to pruning season. It seems such a harsh thing to do.
To cut away what has taken time and energy to put together. I always warn my gardening clients that this may seem harsh, but something has to go if they want the fruit or the flowers.
The wire brush seems the harshest to me. It’s like a full-on assault of scratching and abuse on a protective layer of the soul.
As a soft-hearted kind of person, I wince at the thought. I never like to be that harsh with any living thing.
But there is bark and lichen and moss. A callusing has built up over the seasons that shrouds the potential living underneath.
There, under self-protective layers, is a place of cellular transformation. I can’t see it with the naked eye, but I know it’s there, and all it needs to stimulate it into growth is some irritation and a little light to touch its cells.
Then ‘boom,’ multiplication begins to happen.
Cells form other cells as an explosion of beautiful growth takes place. Then, a few months later, a bud is pushing out in the spring and telling the world that it is here to display divine beauty and make a difference.
By the way, whenever I see this explosion of growth, I do a little dance.
I also, quite often, do a little dance in conversations I have with people like you.
 
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Yes. A Christian can have a Mental Illness

Having a Mental Illness can mean you feel very alone, but does being a Christian mean that you’re somehow on the outside? 
I wouldn’t have noticed it at the time, but a few years ago, I began to look at the shaping influences that happened in my early life, particularly the Christian Church that my parents were very involved with.
We lived in the countryside and attended a church in the local township. Small church, and it was a place, I suppose, where you got to know quite a bit about each other.
Looking back now, I recognize that quite a few people struggled with various Mental Illnesses. For example, one of the church attendees had had a Lobotomy. Another would have Bipolar mood swings. Some would sit in the pews nursing depression whilst others would fidget with anxiety.
There was glue, however. An acceptance of ‘lame ducks,’ as my Father would lovingly call them. My mother would spend hours on the phone listening to the heart calls.
I suppose this normalized this encounter of Mental Unwellness to me.
I remember one day, though, later in his life, where my Father shared an experience of a Pastor telling my mother to believe certain scripture passages and that she would be healed. A kind of ‘Name it and Claim it’ approach.
I could sense his annoyance about what I would call a ‘burden of performance’ being laid on her. I would love to have a soul-talk conversation with him about this now.
All these shaping influences upon my thinking.
 
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Tired? Take Time to Cease and Savor Delight

You’re tired, drained, but you can’t find a simple way to restore. So maybe it’s time to cease and savor delight in the little moments.
It had been a tough week—full-on giving out. People, work, tasks, energy-draining memories all want a piece of the energy pie.
What was leftover were like crumbs on a tin foil pie tray. That pie you bought in a rush to answer the demand of an evening meal. That’s how it felt.
Life, energy, all being eaten up, with a few crumbs leftover. Depression shadowed over the shoulders. Anxiety beat at the door.
They knew the next week would probably be the same. This time next week, they would again feel weak, drained, and lifeless.
‘Oh, for a holiday,’ they whispered.
Their mind drifted to memories of a time on a beach. Toes digging into the sand, gentle waves spilling over each other, and melting ice cream. It was a moment of delight for them. “Oh, to be there again’ they dreamed, and in a sense, they were. They were in cease and delight mode.
Do you know how to cease and delight?
 
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