Intrusive Thoughts: How to Stop Them

How can you find peace in the chaos of betrayal? It’s the question of the ages. How do you escape from the relentless intrusion of painful memories, or the fearful thoughts of what might yet happen. Uninvited, these thoughts crash in on our consciousness. At best, they leave us unsettled and at worse, incapacitated, grasping for a sense of stability, longing for times past where all seemed well and secure.

The problem is focus. God grants all the peace I need, but He only gives the grace I need in the moment. He meets me in my time of need, but he doesn’t necessarily grant me the grace to handle events that have yet to occur, nor does his grace sustain me in past memories. But, it is more than sufficient for the moment. My challenge is to remain in this present moment where I can rest in his grace.

The difficulty arrives, and my peace departs, as I begin to use my “Magic Time Machine.” In an instant, I leave the grace found in the presence of God and I jump time zones traveling to far and distant places absent of peace and grace. God grants abundant peace in the present because this is where we can meet him. When Moses asked God who he should say sent him, the Lord answered “I am.” To me that means that He is the God of the now. While He is most certainly the God of the past and the future, only in the now can I meet my maker and find the grace necessary to handle difficult circumstances.

Nevertheless, it is our human nature to want to jump time zones. It is hard for us to stay in the moment. We focus on the past where painful wounds capture our attention or we dwell on those past events that gave us a sense of importance or worth. At other times, our focus is future events and we worry about things not turning out as we want or we daydream about life as we’ve always wanted it. When we choose to abandon the now and dwell on the past or the future, we leave behind our peace as well. Why we choose to leave our place of peace and grace is baffling. Why we would want to live in the guilt and pain of past events or with the fear and worry of events not yet occurred is perplexing sometimes.

The temptation to focus on the past or future can be compelling, but there are warning signs of this impending time travel, sort of like the lights in your car dashboard. I love the “idiot” lights on the dashboard of my car. They warn me when things aren’t right. We also have idiot lights on our emotional dashboard. Anytime we experience fear, guilt, shame, and/or anger, we know we’ve entered the time machine and jumped to a different zone. When we experience guilt or shame, we’ve exited God’s presence and reverted to sometime in the past. When we experience fear, we know we’ve jumped to a future moment where we have yet to receive the grace necessary to handle whatever imaginary situation is capturing us. These emotions need to serve as our warning system prompting us to return to the present moment where we can receive the strength and grace we need in order to deal with our difficult situation.

Navigating difficult times requires a willingness to stay out of our magic time machine and a choice to dwell in the moment. Failure to do so results in our loss of peace and inability cope with what is at hand. Please keep your focus and stay in the moment. Stop the time travel and find what you’re looking for right now.

December 2007