Don't trust your feelings

So lately I've been trying to adjust my attitude, and while doing so I've realized that I have gotten out of the habit of taking my thoughts captive. As a person who grew up in a Christian home, I have been familiar with the verse in 2 Corinthians forever, but only gained understanding of what it truly means a few years ago.

A few years ago, I was full of anger, resentment and bitterness and in an attempt to get my life and relationship with God back on track I started meeting with a spiritual mentor. She is wonderful and has helped grow in my walk with God significantly. It was through one of the studies that we did that I learned what taking my thoughts captive meant. The world is full of lies. Full of things that try to distract us and try to deceive our minds. Taking our thoughts captive means catching those lies that are running around in your head and lining them up with what the Bible says. If they don't match, then obviously that is a lie. From there we are to renounce the lie that we have been believing and announce the truth of God's word.

I've been out of practice lately, which has probably allowed my attitude to shift into such negativity. I'm constantly saying things like "our baby is never going to get here" or "God has forgotten about us". These are obviously not true, but the problem is I FEEL like they are. Unfortunately for us, our feelings make us think that something is true because we feel all the hurt and pain from whatever is happening in our life. The dilemma is that our feelings aren't necessarily an accurate portrayal of the truth. Our feelings are incredibly real and matter, however we need to give our feelings some significant adjustments on occasion as well. Like my mentor always tells me, take your thoughts captive by recognizing the lie you believe, replace it with God's truth and your feelings will catch up later.

I've been putting my feelings and the lies that I have floating around in check. God hasn't forgotten about me, everything he does is in His perfect timing, and right now I need to wait. Our baby will come - again in God's timing. God isn't punishing us with infertility for something we did in the past, He loves us and wants us to have complete dependence and trust in him.

I've already been putting these skills back into practice and have been noticing the shift in my attitude. Justin is also a great person to have around as he constantly saying to me "Charissa, you are believing a lie", he is good at giving me a reality check when I need it. So I am now waiting, with a better attitude, believing God's truth and just waiting for my feelings to catch up.

2 Corinthians 10:3-5
"For though we live in the world, we do not wage war as the world does. The weapons we fight with are not the weapons of the world. On the contrary, they have divine power to demolish strongholds. We demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ".

Attitude Adjustment

Hey everyone, I've been trying to get consistent in my blogging but it seems like I do a couple and then completely forget, so here's a bit of an update blog.

Mother's day happened in May, and I think that was kinda sucky. I remember last year on Mother's day, I was hoping that Mother's day 2014 would be a day that I was actually a Mother. And here we are a few weeks later, still no baby…. I think the hardest thing for me, is not being jealous of people having babies - it's being jealous of people that will have 2 - 3 kids in the time it will take us to get our baby. There are people I know that are pregnant for the second time since we started our adoption process, I find that hard. Almost like people are hogging the babies… only I know they aren't. Once again, it's hard to stand still while everyone else doesn't.

I have been in a really low place in the last few months. Feeling like all my hope is gone, not wanting to leave my house, see people or really do anything. But at the same time, I hassle Justin that we never do anything and that I want to do stuff, but when it comes down to it, I really don't. What a weird place to be. As mentioned before, I don't feel depressed, I just feel really discouraged and quite hopeless on a lot of days. Because of this I have been having the worst attitude, and God has really convicted me of this in the past week or so.

As I have been trying to adjust my attitude, to stop feeling sorry for myself and mope in my hopelessness - I have been diving into a book of the bible that I find very encouraging when I get like this. The book of James.

"Consider it pure joy, my brothers and sisters, whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith produces perseverance. Let perseverance finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything. If any of you lacks wisdom, you should ask God, who gives generously to all without finding fault, and it will be given to you." James 1:2-5.

I have been lacking peace, and patience. So I have been asking God for these things, but at the same time I know patience is developed by waiting. So here I am, continuing to wait, but hoping to do it with a better attitude. I am also lacking children, so I will continue to pray that God will end our wait soon.

Life throws a lot of hard times our way, it's part of living. I'm making a choice to do it with a better attitude. One that clings to the truth that God's timing is always perfect, and the match that he has for us is the best one ever. So in the mean time, I'm trying to be full of hope, because in Jesus, there is nothing but hope. And he's got my back.