Battleground
/I had a panic attack a few nights ago.
It had been years since I’d had one, or at least one of that scale. I couldn’t catch my breath, my stomach was in knots, and even though all I wanted to do was sleep, I laid wide awake in my queen size.
I stayed up almost the entire night, and boy did I pay for it the next day. Upon arriving at my office, I sluggishly made my way over to the espresso machine and downed a double shot. I sat at my desk, exhausted, and still not fully recovered from the overwhelming emotions of night before.
I went through the motions, doing what I needed to do: answer emails, make phone calls, drink more espresso - ya know, adult things.
When 5 o’clock rolled around, I packed up my things, closed the office, and drove home. After eating some lukewarm leftovers for dinner (I definitely could have microwaved them longer, but my espresso had just worn off), I sat on the couch and pulled out my phone, intending to scroll through Tik Tok until my eyelids felt heavy enough to go to sleep.
As I sat down though, something caught my eye - it was a book that my boyfriend’s mom purchased for me awhile back called “Get Out of Your Head.” I looked back down at my phone, but something in me forced my attention back to the book. Okay God, I thought, I’ll bite.
Author Jennie Allen had me fully invested after the first 5 sentences. In a gorgeous combination of Theology and neuroscience, she explains how the enemy has taken control of our minds, and how he continues to attack not by outright hurting us, but by using our own thoughts to trap us in endless spirals of anxiety.
Yikes.
My panic attack from a few nights prior was brought on by one of these spirals. At some point during the day, my boyfriend had replied to something that I had said with low enthusiasm.
“He’s losing interest in you” my enemy whispered, “he is going to leave you.”
And just like that, my brain had jumped all the way from A to Z, filling in every single blank along the way. With little to no evidence, I had come to the conclusion that the love of my life was no longer attracted to me, never actually loved me, and the only reason that our relationship has gone on as long as it has is because he’s too scared to tell me that he doesn’t want to be with me.
Woah.
I wasn’t up all night worrying about something that had actually happened to me - no, the reason that I was sleepless and exhausted was because of a scenario that never even happened. I made myself miserable, and all the enemy had to do was make a suggestion.
Is my psyche really that fragile? Are my thoughts truly that easily persuaded? I sat in bed pondering these things, wondering where else I had allowed such lies to take root.
It became clear to me that in almost every area of my life, I was under mental attack - anxious about my relationship, ungrateful for my job, lazy in my scripture reading & church attendance…the list went on and on, and by the end of it, there were more areas of my life that the devil was digging his ugly hands into than not.
And that really pissed me off.
I didn’t want to be numb anymore. I didn’t want to be anxious anymore. I wanted to feel like myself again. I wanted to feel confident and sure, and thankfully, I knew exactly where to start (shoutout Jennie Allen).
I drew a mental map of everything that was bothering me, along with all of the possible outcomes that my brain could possibly imagine. I then forced myself to read every single one out loud, and you know what? They all sounded absolutely ridiculous.
Don’t get me wrong, it took a couple of readings before the ridiculousness actually came out - the first couple of times I was still like “yeah, that makes sense.”
But you see, it’s very easy for us to get lost in our own brains. We are able to take something that is completely preposterous in the real world and then rationalize it, giving it a permanent home in our minds. We fixate and stew and mull it over again and again and again, and each time we think that thought, it starts to feel more real.
But it’s not real. It’s just a thought. And what are we called to do with our thoughts?
Submit them to Christ.
2 Corinthians 10:3-5 says:
“We are human, but we don’t wage war as humans do. We use God’s mighty weapons, not worldly weapons, to knock down the strongholds of human reasoning and to destroy false arguments. We destroy every proud obstacle that keeps people from knowing God. We take captive every thought and make it obedient to Christ.”
Did you get that? Every. Single. Thought.
Every thought that enters and leaves your wrinkled brain is to be submitted to Christ - whether it’s about something serious or something mundane. If we do not submit our thoughts to Christ, our minds become a playground for the devil to run rampant. He will take any and every opportunity you give him to wreak havoc, and he will use the greatest weapon that he can to take you down - yourself.
The war we are fighting is not in front of us, but inside of us. The enemy is picking fights between our ears, and we’re not only allowing it, we’re encouraging it. Every single time that we indulge in the anxious thoughts he whispers in our ear, we are falling for his trap.
No more.
It’s time to wake up.
This is war.
Now, hear me say that wars are not won overnight. Unraveling all of the lies that he has so deeply woven into your subconscious are going to take awhile to locate and uproot. You are going to need to give yourself time, and most of all, grace.
I realize now that a lot of my anxious thoughts have roots deeper than the initial thought itself - things like “I am unloveable” and “I am worthless” are the culprits behind the crimes my brain commits against itself.
Let’s take my recent panic attack for example. What started with a mildly unenthusiastic word from my boyfriend jumped to:
> I’m annoying him.
> I’ve probably been annoying him for awhile now.
> I need to stop talking so much so I don’t annoy him.
> He’s going to leave me if I keep annoying him.
> He wants to leave, but he’s too scared to.
> He doesn’t actually love me anymore.
> I annoy everyone.
> Everyone leaves me.
> I am unlovable.
I know I’m not the only one who does this. I know that this is one of the most common forms of attack the enemy uses because it’s so sneaky that majority of the time we don’t even know it’s happening.
It starts with a thought, and ends in a never-ending spiral. The devil hands us a shovel, and we dig ourselves a 6-foot grave and jump right in.
We have got to get ahold of ourselves.
Or, rather, let Christ take ahold of us.
A lot of our anxious thoughts go back to our illusion of control. We have this delusion that if we worry about something enough, we’ll be prepared for it when it happens and therefore will lessen the negative effects - which is exactly what I said, a delusion.
How do I know that?
Well, for starters, my boyfriend and I are still together.
I spent an entire night fixating on an issue that didn’t exist outside of my mind. I was up all night panicking about what could happen, and it never even happened.
I told him about my ridiculous spiral the next day. He first assured me that he wasn’t going to leave me, and then followed it up with “don’t be dumb.”
We cannot keep letting the devil’s whispers run free in our minds. Your brain is a precious creation, given to you in full complexity from the One who understands it best because He created you. He knows every thought that you think before your synapses even have time to fire - let Him take care of the anxious ones.
Don’t allow yourself to be crushed under the weight of your thoughts. Your brain is a battleground, and the only way for you to win the war is to grab every thought by the neck and force it to submit to Jesus - He will take it from there.
Submitting your thoughts to Christ doesn’t mean that the bad thoughts go away - it’s actively choosing to have confidence in the fact that the One who sits on the throne is in control of your life, and that wasting another second worrying is a waste of the precious time He has given you on this earth. It’s knowing that your thoughts have no actual power over you, but Christ has executive power over them.
The battle is already won. Don’t allow yourself to be distracted by your anxiety any longer. Do not dwell on the things that could be or should be, but instead, set your mind on the Truth: Jesus decided that you were to die for, and in doing so, took on the burden of sin that you could not carry. Cast your anxieties onto Him, for He cares for you.
Link to Get Out of Your Head:
*Disclaimer - as someone who studied psychology in college and suffers from hereditary anxiety, I know that many of you reading this experience a kind of anxiety that is rooted solely in the chemicals of your brain. Please do not read this and think that I am saying “just pray it away” or anything of the sort. While I do believe that God can do anything, including heal mental illness, I am not blind to the dark reality of anxiety and depression that exists in millions of people’s lives. While you can still choose to submit your thoughts to Christ, there is no shame in seeking treatment in the forms of therapy or medication. Going to therapy has been one of the best decisions that I have ever made. Some anxieties simply cannot be managed by yourself, so do not feel like you need to do it all alone. Asking for help is not weak, it is brave.