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.

Having Faith Amidst Disappointment

I just graduated college in the middle of a global pandemic.

If you had asked me four years ago where I thought I was going to end up after graduation, never in a million years would I have said “unemployed and moving back in with my parents”. Never. If you had told freshman year Bailey that’s where she was headed, she would have dropped out.

And yet, that’s exactly where I am. I have the degree I worked so hard for, and every single job I have applied for has told me no. I won’t be able to afford to live on my own, so it seems that moving back in with my parents is the only option. I’ve lived on my own for four years, and now all of my furniture is going into a storage unit to collect cobwebs. My residence will be my childhood bedroom. My income will be next to nonexistent. I feel completely and utterly out of control - so here I am, degree in hand, completely lost and unsure about what’s next.

On top of all of that, I have now more than ever fallen into the social media comparison trap. I feel like there has been an enormous push on social media to really “take advantage of quarantine” - in other words, if you’re not exercising daily, eating healthy, or starting a business right now, then you’re wasting your time. I’ve been struggling on and off with this weird sense of guilt about not feeling motivated to do all of these things.

On the flip side of that guilty feeling is the reality that the current state of the world is…well, chaotic. I should be giving myself grace and being gentle with myself as I learn how to navigate this new situation, but I just can’t shake this overwhelming sense of guilt, dismay, and absolute defeat.

Disappointment doesn’t begin to describe how I feel about my current situation.

And it breaks my heart to know that so many of you are in the same boat.

I think we can all agree that the current state of the world sucks. It sucks. And there’s absolutely nothing we can do about it. We are completely helpless and out of control.

So how do we move forward? How do we keep our faith when the disappointments just keep coming?

Well, the first thing we have to acknowledge is probably the most obvious: we were never in control in the first place.

We as humans constantly make the mistake of thinking that we are in control of our lives and what happens in them, and while we do make our own decisions and exercise our free will daily, it is crucial that we understand how involved God is. God doesn’t just sit and observe from above, He is an active participant in our lives. He controls what time you wake up and how many red lights you get stopped at on your way to work. He controls whether or not they’re out of toilet paper at the supermarket. He controls whether or not we have breath in our lungs and whether or not our hearts continue to beat. God is in the details of your life - even the ones that seem small and insignificant.

He is in control of everything.

The second truth that must be acknowledged is that God is good.

I know you read that, but read it again.

God does everything for the good of His holy kingdom. He is constantly preparing a place for us and moving the parts and pieces necessary to get us to the point of Christ’s return.

Here’s the thing though -

Yes, everything He does is for His kingdom, but we’re all heirs…so that kingdom He’s building? Yeah, that’s for you. You get to take part in that. You get to live with your Creator in paradise for eternity. Everything God does is for the good of the Kingdom, but you’re a part of that - meaning that He is so good that what is in the best interest of the kingdom is in your best interest as well.

I cannot stress this enough: God is good. He did not forget about you. Bad stuff is not happening to harm you, but to form you - form you into someone who is more like His perfect Son. Form you into the person you were created to be in the first place.

So if we take these two truths at face value, we can draw one conclusion: that this is all happening for a reason.

Now you’re probably thinking, “but Baileyyyy…that doesn’t make it any easier!”

Girl. I know.

I don’t think there’s anything that I could say to make this situation better for you, no matter how badly I want to. I struggle with my current reality daily. It’s not going to be easy for awhile, but you know what? We don’t need ease. You and me, we don’t need perfect. We don’t need simple.

We need to stand firm in our faith, draw near to the Father, and cling to the hope that we have in Him - and we do have hope in Him!

You’re going to be alright. You’re going to be able to look back at this absolute mess and be grateful about the way that it happened. At the end of it all, you’re going to be able to dust yourself off, smile, and say “wow, if I could make it through that, then I am beyond ready for whatever’s ahead of me.”

God is in the details of your life, and He will never abandon you. Every single thing-good and bad-is happening for your benefit. Find your peace in that.

And hey - you’re gonna be okay.

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This is a really weird time, and I know for a fact that I am not the only one struggling with the current state of my life. If you need prayer, please reach out to me! I want to create a community where praying for each other is the usual thing, so if you have any prayer, big or small, click here.

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Here’s some scripture to encourage you as you learn to navigate this season. Write these down, hang them on your mirror, and read them out loud to declare them over your life every time you see them!

Jeremiah 29:11 - “For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the Lord. “Plans that are good for you and not to harm you; plans to give you hope and a future.”

Proverbs 3:5-6 - Trust in the Lord with all your heart, do not lean on your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge Him, and He will make your paths straight.

1 Peter 1:3-4 - Because God raised Jesus Christ from the dead, we now live with great expectation. We have a priceless inheritance - an inheritance that is kept in heaven for you, pure and undefiled, beyond the reach of change and decay.

Romans 12:12 - Rejoice and be confident in hope. Be patient in trouble, and keep on praying.

and here’s some songs:

Already There - Casting Crowns

Breakthrough (Live) - Red Rocks Worship

Soul’s Anthem - Tori Kelly

Sweet Serendipity - Lee DeWyze

To the One (Live) - UPPERROOM

Come to Me (Spontaneous) - Bethel Music, Jenn & Brian Johnson

Gravity - Jenn & Brian Johnson

Be a Friend

When I was younger, I didn’t have very many friends.

I didn’t really have any friends, actually. I was a pretty lonely kid. I didn’t talk to people in fear that they might think I was weird or awkward, so I just kept to quiet. I spent a lot of time by myself, and I spent a lot of time alone with my thoughts.

The anxiety didn’t set in all at once, it built up over time. My brain was a ticking time bomb of unexpressed emotions. I was so lonely - I had convinced myself that I was too socially awkward to make friends, and that I was unworthy of friendship. The enemy berated my brain daily; he had a tight grip on my thoughts. He whispered to me over and over that I was worthless and that no one liked me. The worst part is that I believed him. Eventually, everything got so pent up that it had to come out.

I remember walking down the stairs and seeing my parents sitting in the living room. I was too tired to beat around the bush, so I just came out and said it -

“I’m thinking about killing myself.”

Saying those words aloud opened up a floodgate of emotion. I had a large-scale panic attack that lasted five days. In those five days, I stayed home from school so my parents and church leaders could counsel me, pray with me, and provide me with more love and comfort than I could ever ask for. I thank God for those people every day.

God was so faithful through the whole thing. He pulled me close, and provided me with loving comfort. I went to see a therapist, who helped me learn how to work through my feelings. God continued to place people in my life to take care of me. Over time, the anxiety subsided and my confidence grew, and I started to reach out to people at school and church. I made friends, and the loneliness that was once so rock solid within me fell apart.

When I began to heal, I made two promises to myself:

1. I would never allow myself to get that low again without talking to someone about it.

2. I never wanted anyone to feel the way I felt, and if someone needed a friend then I would do everything in my power to make them feel loved.

I would be the light.

In our world, not everybody’s story ends like mine. Not everyone has a happy ending. We live in a world where we are constantly at each other’s throats with criticism and judgement. We ostracize people because they’re “different” or they’re “not cool.” We judge people solely based on their physical appearance and rumors that we hear from others. If they don’t measure up to our standards, they don’t get our friendship.

I’m ashamed to admit it, but I’ve been on both sides of the spectrum. I’ve been so lonely that I wanted to die, but I’ve also been the mean girl. I’ve excluded people and made them feel unloved because of my own insecurities. I’ve blatantly ignored people because I thought they weren’t good enough for me. I’ve treated people like they’re an inconvenience to me. I’ve deliberately spread rumors about people just to bring them down. I’ve been bullied, but I’ve also been a bully.

Matthew 22:39 states it clearly:

“Love your neighbor as yourself.”

When Jesus says that, he calls it the “second greatest commandment,” the first being to love God above all else. Love God, then love people.

Why is that so dang hard?

I don’t mean that sarcastically either - it’s hard to love everyone around you. Trust me, I know. But imagine how different our world would be if we were even just a little bit kinder to those around us.

Often times, it seems that Christians are the worst at this. There has been multiple occasions where I have invited someone to church and they have declined because “they feel judged.” There have also been occasions where someone has found out that I’m a Christian and they no longer felt like they could share things with me because they feared I was going to judge them.

What kind of name have we made for God by being judgmental?

God himself is the supreme judge, but unlike ours, his judgements are just and righteous. We as humans have no right to cast judgement on our neighbor, and by doing so we give the impression that God is as irrational and frivolous as we are. The reality is that we serve a loving God. If God loves us despite our ugly sins, we can love each other.

Let me say that again.

If God - the creator of the universe and everything in it - calls us to love our neighbor as ourselves, then we have absolutely no right to do anything less than that.

Next time you think about judging someone for their appearance, consider this: that person is an image bearer.

Just like you.

Next time you think about screenshotting someone’s post on social media and gossiping about it in your group chat, consider this: that person deserves love and grace.

Just like you.

Next time you see someone sitting alone, consider this: inviting them to sit with you could change their entire day, and possibly their entire outlook on life.

Just like it would for you if you were in their shoes.

Show Jesus to someone today. Be a light. Be a friend. Invite someone who’s lonely to sit by you. Reach out to an old friend you haven’t talked to in awhile. Doing something as small as complimenting a stranger could change the entire trajectory of their day.

Where’s the harm in extending love?

What do you have to lose by being kind?

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I only have one song for you this time, but it’s a good one:

One Awkward Moment - Casting Crowns

*edit - I lied. I want to add one more song:

Nobody - Casting Crowns feat. Matthew West