This is such a great visual on what happens in my head—the spin cycle on the washing machine. Crazy thoughts continuously turning around in a circle coming back to the same place of aggravation. Adding more spin on the thoughts and letting it cycle around in my brain once more. Then again. churning, until the problem seems insurmountable.
What then?
Until I get it out of my head, I can’t look at it with any degree of clarity or truth. This is when my recovery meetings really help. Being with others to say out loud what is going on in my head. Once I put it out here in the world to others, either speaking it or in writing, I can get a different perspective on it. Doing this takes so much power out of the situation that was living in my head. All of the spin and judgement I was adding to it in my head falls away.
It never looks quite as ominous out here in the world outside my head. Speaking it out or writing it on paper, I can see how this may not be the truth. That in the spin cycle in my brain, as in the laundry cycle, I can add detergent to whitewash — or add more dirt and judgement to it and blow it out of proportion. Right?
Connecting with others and talking about what is troubling me, gets it out of the dangerous territory of my brain. Others can help me gain perspective. Then, I get to give the problem to God and let go of the outcome. That is the only way I can get peace on any given situation.
I can move toward acceptance, which is a word I have always struggled with. It implies for me to just take it and “live with it.” Even something I don’t even want. Things out of my control—there it is. I have learned to shift the word “acceptance” in my mind to this phrase in the long version of the Serenity Prayer, “…taking this sinful world as it is, not as I would have it. Trusting that God will make everything right, if I surrender to His Will.”
As it is, not as I would have it. This phrase affects me physically. It takes my control out of it. It allows me to calm down and have peace.
Try this:
• Tell somebody else—take the power out.
• Write it down in your journal.
• Give it to God and trust Him with the outcome.
“And let us consider how we may spur one another on toward love and good deeds, not giving up meeting together, as some are in the habit of doing, but encouraging one another—and all the more as you see the Day approaching.”
Hebrews 10:24-25
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