The Battle of the Mind

I tend to lean towards “hypochondriac” more times than I’d like to admit.  I can google a symptom on the internet and diagnose myself with at least 3 different life-altering diseases or ailments. Not a good thing!

I can snip my hand with scissors and actually feel lockjaw setting in until I get in to the doctor and get a tetanus shot.

I can take two different vitamins/herbs and then start to wonder if they are a bad mix together…and actually think I’m feeling symptoms until I know some time has passed and I’m okay.

I have grown anxious over other things too. Snowy and icy roads. Someone breaking into our home. Accidents. Things happening to my kids.

It’s a battle of the mind.

Now that I’m more aware of this tendency in me, I am more proactive in fighting it. It doesn’t mean those times don’t come, but when they do, I fight them fiercely. I pray. I read scripture. I sing Sunday school songs in my head. I repeat God’s promises to me. And the battle recedes.

I’m reminded that satan would love nothing more than to win over my mind. He knows he can’t have my heart – so he engages my mind in a very real struggle. But I’m on to him. I know that anxiety and fear are two of his busiest and most successful tactics, not just on me, but on a lot of people.

I want my faith to be larger than life. I want it to be alive and ready for those arrows of anxiety when they come my way. And believe me, they WILL come. I want to cut them off before they even have a chance to take seed and grow in me.

So I ward off those areas that I know are weaknesses for me. I no longer try to google my health symptoms if I feel I could run away with what I read in my mind.

I try to avoid driving when I can in snow and ice because I know the stress and worry that it causes me.

I implement boundaries on my own mind and heart. I KNOW where my weaknesses lie and I don’t want to give satan any more ground!

We have a choice in how we think. Sometimes it’s a real fight and it may feel like we won’t win that battle waging inside of our minds. But we can. We CAN win it and we can be victorious with the Lord’s help.

Won’t you join me as I seek to remove this particular weak ground from my life? We no longer have to be victims of our anxious and fearful thoughts.

2 Timothy 1:7 (NIV)

For God did not give us a spirit of timidity, but a spirit of power, of love, and of self-discipline.

Ephesians 6:12 (NIV)

For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms.