At the end of the movie, while still experiencing these physical reactions associated with danger, the lights in the theater would brighten and the audience would stand to leave. Those feelings of tension, which had been so prominent a few minutes earlier, would completely disappear along with its physiological effects.
We were never really in danger, but our feelings responded to sights and sounds from the screen, rather than the truth of reality. Surprisingly, our physical responses quickly corresponded with our feelings, despite the fact that our emotions were based on unrealities.
When our dark thoughts are triggered, feelings of regret and shame make us cringe. We respond by gathering up our baggage and taking a trip down memory lane. We wrestle with our past and try to rewrite the narrative. We justify, rationalize, and analyze. We surrender to the downward spiral and wonder why we ever believed we could outrun our demons.
After sliding into the abyss of our never-ending regrets, our insides feel hollow, and we become hopelessly despondent. The weight of remorse becomes too heavy to carry. We wonder how we can ever rise above this base line of our worst selves.
These thoughts can snowball and take us under for days. The avalanche of our wrongness buries us in a cold dark tomb of guilt. We are irritable, depressed, angry, and nauseous. We lack motivation and have no sense of purpose. It seems God is so far away, and it is pointless to pray.
To level up, we must develop healthy thought patterns and discipline our minds to stay on a positive track. We can no longer allow our thoughts to wander aimlessly through the minefield of our worst imaginations. We must carve new pathways for our thoughts to travel. We need to keep our thoughts on the high road and pump the brakes when we are headed for the ditch. But how?
We often have the best of intentions to love wholeheartedly and unconditionally. But our plans can quickly get lost in a swirling sea of resentment, when we suspect our kindness has been mistaken for weakness. We recoil whenever we give an inch only to be met with demands for a mile.
When we pull away from relationships because the emotional cost is too great, we feel like a bad person. We want to follow the leadership of Jesus. We want to be the kind of person who turns the other cheek and goes the extra mile. But being that person takes its toll on our sense of well-being. Our trust turns into suspicion. Our self-sacrifice turns into self-defense and self-preservation. We become discouraged and frustrated. Our personal investments don’t always pay off and it seems pointless to throw any more emotional currency toward relationships that are bankrupting us.
With our emotional center depleted, it is easy to just shut down and go dark. For some of us, the darkness is called depression, and we struggle with thoughts of self-harm. For some of us, the darkness is shoved aside with distractions. We bury ourselves in work, entertainment, shopping, or anything else that will keep us from dealing with our unmet emotional needs.
Our minds were filled with fear, but the fears were not always clearly defined. So, we examined our fears more closely and realized they were rooted in two basic lies.
1. We Were Not Enough
We feared that we weren’t smart or capable enough to maintain our place on this planet. We feared we would not be able to make good enough plans and follow through on them. We feared we would not be able to earn enough money to pay the bills. We feared we could not meet the expectations others had for us, or those we had for ourselves.
We feared that our ‘not-enough-ness’ would be discovered and we would be humiliated. We feared social settings because we were not interesting enough. We feared being forgotten because we just weren’t very remarkable. We feared being abandoned because we just didn’t bring enough to the table.
We feared that we were ill-equipped and woefully inadequate to handle the overwhelming responsibility of life on this planet.
2.We were too much.
We feared that we were too much trouble and not worth the effort. We feared that we were too boring, too impatient, too greedy, too lustful, too resentful, or too lazy.
We feared that we were too insistent on getting our own way. We feared that our sense of entitlement and list of demands were turning us into tyrants.
We feared being alone because sometimes we were too much, even for ourselves.
Finding Total Recovery in the Words of Christ, "It is Finished!" 