Skip to main content

Idle Hands & Idle Minds

Idle hands are the devil's tools.
(here, my hands do the devil's work of melting snow)

I think that's the saying. My personal adaptation for today is:
Idle minds are the devil's playground.

When you clear my schedule of deadlines and projects and generally, anything of major substance, my mind is left free as a bird.

Free to dream, which I'd been looking forward to.
Free to freak out, which I hadn't anticipated.

Turns out, I'm not quite as amazingly zen-like as I thought. Once I started stressing a little, it was surprisingly easy to let it keep growing. I daydreamed all the things that could go wrong with the uncertainty and changes in my life. I had conversations with friends that were half reassuring and half commiseration. I berated myself for freaking out when I have SO many blessings I could be enjoying instead.

One day, I found myself thinking, I wish I could go back to October. October was a good month.

But the thing is, October was actually kind of stressful. I felt inexplicably sad in October. And unsure. And work was busy. Six months later, I look back and think October was great. Because I know how things turned out. Because the uncertainties of October became clear in November.

And I realized that in six months, April will probably be a very good month, provided I don't waste it away in irrational worrying.

So finally, after ten days of unpleasant neurosis, with the aid of wise counsel, some honest conversations & a fair bit of prayer, I have concluded:
I need to stop thinking so much and live in reality.

(here, my hand says STOP to the sun. Like my mind says STOP to fear)

Allow me to break this down:
a. Stop - I'm in control of this situation, because I am in control of my thoughts.
b. thinking so much - thinking is good, but it is possible to overthink. This is unwise.
c. and live - I need to be living my life as it is unfolding, fully present in today, not caught up in what could or could not be the future.
d. in reality. - my fears come down to "what ifs" and the thing about "what ifs" is that they are not reality. I need to act and think and respond to the things that are certain, not the things that my head decides will be.


Practical application for Beth's life?
1. Make plans. Don't "keep busy" to avoid thinking, but don't give myself days of nothingness with only my thoughts for company. Sometimes my thoughts are not friendly.
2. Refuse to dwell. I often have to tell myself to redirect my thoughts, to "let go" and trust that "time is your friend."
3. Celebrate. There are so many good things and people around me. I'm gonna focus on making the most of them.
4. Know Jesus more. Reality. Truth. These things matter to me and my sanity. And, I believe they're summed up in Jesus.

Comments

  1. Remember - what God has done in the past, what He has promised to do today, what He has shown you as certainty about the future. Remember - think on these things and live today for His glory! Love your honest post.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Simone Weil: On "Forms of the Implicit Love of God"

Simone Weil time again! One of the essays in Waiting for God  is entitled "Forms of the Implicit Love of God." Her main argument is that before a soul has "direct contact" with God, there are three types of love that are implicitly  the love of God, though they seem to have a different explicit  object. That is, in loving X, you are really loving Y. (in this case, Y = God). As for the X of the equation, she lists: Love of neighbor  Love of the beauty of the world  Love of religious practices  and a special sidebar to Friendship “Each has the virtue of a sacrament,” she writes. Each of these loves is something to be respected, honoured, and understood both symbolically and concretely. On each page of this essay, I found myself underlining profound, challenging, and thought-provoking words. There's so much to consider that I've gone back several times, mulling it over and wondering how my life would look if I truly believed even half of these thin

Esse - Czeslaw Milosz

I'm on a bit of a poetry binge this week, and Monday afternoon found me lying on the luxurious shag rug of a friend's tiny apartment, re-reading some of my favourite poets (ee cummings, William Carlos Williams, Czeslaw Milosz). It is an adventure to re-open a collection and wonder what will pop out, knowing something you've read before will strike you afresh, or you will be reminded of a particularly moving line that you had somehow forgotten. Like this piece from Milosz, which floors me. Every. damn.* time. The first time I read it, I lay in a park with a friend (this same friend who offered me her rug as my reading burrow) and demanded that I share it with her. I spoke it carefully, and then, into the post-reading silence, I slammed the book shut, and dropped it as loudly as I could onto the grass. "I'm never reading anything again," I declared, "What else is there to say?" Esse I looked at that face, dumbfounded. The lights of métro st

I Like to Keep My Issues Drawn

It's Sunday night and I am multi-tasking. Paid some bills, catching up on free musical downloads from the past month, thinking about the mix-tape I need to make and planning my last assignment for writing class. Shortly, I will abandon the laptop to write my first draft by hand. But until then, I am thinking about music. This song played for me earlier this afternoon, as I attempted to nap. I woke up somewhere between 5 and 5:30 this morning, then lay in bed until 8 o'clock flipping sides and thinking about every part of my life that exists. It wasn't stressful, but it wasn't quite restful either...This past month, I have spent a lot of time rebuffing lies and refusing to believe that the inside of my heart and mind can never change. I feel like Florence + The Machine 's song "Shake it Out" captures many of these feelings & thoughts. (addendum: is the line "I like to keep my issues strong or drawn ?" Lyrics sites have it as "stro