Spiritual Voyages

I am pleased to announce that 58 writers and myself were chosen from CHRISTIAN WRITERS FOR LIFE, a FB group, to be a part of a book compilation entitled “Lessons That Shaped Our Lives: Stories of the Teachers Who Pointed Us Toward God.”

The book can be purchased for around $15.00. Just click on the link below if you are interested.

https://christian-writers-for-life.square.site/s/search?q=Lessons%20that%20shaped%20our%20lives

Here is a three-minute read from my contribution about how to “renew your mind” and thereby “cease from your stinkin thinking.”

Corrie ten Boom said, “Worry is like a rocking chair; it keeps you busy but doesn’t bring you farther.”

Women in my family act like this metaphor: they are overly concerned with the ‘what-ifs’of life, rehearsing the worst case scenario – engaging in exhausting mental gymnastics that do not lead to any true resolution.

Despite my mother as a psychiatric nurse for sixty years, and trying to help others with mental and emotional struggles, she has seemingly never conquered how to control her inner distress.

When my grandmother was living, I recall my Aunt telling haunting stories of how doctors (in the early 1930’s) treated Grammy’s debilitating depression with shock treatments. 

My story isn’t much different. At the age of twenty-seven, plagued with mental and emotional torment, I found myself unable to properly care for my two young boys. My husband reluctantly took me to a psychiatrist. 

I was  prescribed anti-depressants in hopes the pills would  jolt me out of my dreary den, but the meds made me deathly ill. I couldn’t stomach them.

On a more positive note, a turning point for me occurred when my faithful prayer partner walked right into my bedroom  and recited the scripture  from 2nd Timothy 1:7.

She personalized this biblical exhortation by declaring, “Linda, “God did not give you a spirit of fear. He has given you spirit of power and of love and of a calm and well-balanced mind and discipline and self-control. Now get out of that bed! (AMP)

Heeding my friends encouragement to apprehend inner peace, I started to read the Bible daily, but I still hit bumps in the road.

Since I was too sad to leave my bed, the only solace for me was to watch Christian television; my toddlers at my feet -happily playing with their toys.

It was here that I found Joyce Meyers, a TV personality.

Some would call her a celebrity, but I truly felt as if she was personally teaching me from her book “The Battlefield of the Mind” 

I remember devouring Joyce’s biblical content like it was yesterday. I underlined and highlighted eye-opening truth on almost every page.

As a baby Christian, I was clueless about the importance of having a sanctified thought life.

Through Joyce’s anecdotal examples,  I was able to start putting 2nd Corinthians 10:5 in practice, “to take every thought captive as it exalts itself above the Lord.

Coming from a Christian family and attending church regularly as a child, I can’t recall anyone teaching that worrying was a sin.

Through Joyce’s exhortation, I was challenged to recognize my “natural” (carnal) mind as it opposed the Mind of the Spirit of God

I welcomed what this gifted teacher taught from 1st Peter 5:7. 

Learning to “Walk in the Spirit, “ I began to discern the still small voice of God and not take the bait of the enemy.

Through Joyce’s insight, I grasped how to exercise my will over the thoughts of my mind – a lesson my mother and grandmother never learned.

Unlike my maternal predecessors, I was learning how to “cast my cares onto the Lord.”

Like Joyce, who was a forerunner in her family, I believe I am breaking the chokehold of fear, leaving a lasting mark on my adult children so they can be containers of God’s peace.