Life has been hard, I’m just going to be super honest about that. Not in a hunger way or in a mourning way, but there are so many ways for life to be hard, and I’ve been in one of those ways. I’m sure you know exactly how it feels. This rut has been a few years long and has compounded over that time, so it’s looming larger as I’m dwindling down, and I’m having a difficult time self-regulating.
For years, I’ve been struggling over What To Do (always said in my head like it’s a title). I think I’ve written on that before. Keep writing on Freely Educate as a job, though it’s of no interest to me anymore. Begin our little farm, though we haven’t managed to keep even chickens from the bears? Write (on which site?), though my desk is in a utility trailer and I can’t find paper. (These last two, if you’re curious, are hints of the way life has been difficult lately). Sell salve or ferments, though I don’t have a kitchen or even so much as a countertop to create them on.
My mind was stuck in the mud there, in the What To Do question, and I couldn’t move on from it. The reason I’m here now is because I think I just need to write and to go back to 2008, when I created a blog based on Philippians 4:6
This list is a suggestion of what to think about when one’s mind is full of anxious thoughts. In 2008, I had a friend betray me unexpectedly and my mind went into a tailspin of anxious thoughts. I couldn’t stop thinking about the issue. Weeks into it, I ran into the truth that we can only have one thought at a time. I’d also been reading Scripture and bumped into a verse I’d memorized as a child, but read with new insight: “Whatever is true, noble, just, pure, lovely, of good report, virtuous, praiseworthy — think on these things.” Whenever I’d have an anxious or negative thought (every 30 seconds it seemed), I’d switch the thought to something on the Philippians 4:8 list, which I soon began to call “just, pure, lovely.”
It helped me quite a lot to not just try to think up something good but to actively notice something good. So I began noticing the way the sun shone through our toddler’s blond hair, the way the bread’s crust baked perfectly brown, the sound of a bird in the distance, the silhouette of a winter tree. I began sharing those observations on my blog (Just Pure Lovely), and through social media. It was so good for me, and it even helped others, too, based on comments I received.
I never meant to stop, but life changed, as it does. The children could no longer be captured on film (they grew up!), and our move – the one I fussed about in the first two paragraphs here – has left me in such a puddle that I have had difficulty thinking on the just, pure, lovely. I’ve fallen into the muck of thinking about the difficult, insurmountable, and ugly.
That’s why, though this evening I’m surrounded by reminders of a life I want to change, I’m writing here to begin thinking on the just, pure, lovely once again.
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