You know those mornings when you say, “I must have woken up on the wrong side of the bed”?
That was me the other day, except the more I thought about it, the more I realized that wasn’t really what happened. I actually woke up feeling fine.
Then, while I was getting ready for work, I started thinking about something that had been frustrating me. The more I thought about it, the more irritated I got. Then my mind jumped to something else completely unrelated, just another little annoyance, and I started getting mad about that too.
Before long, I had worked myself into a whole tornado of negative thinking.
The funny thing is, I knew I was doing it. In the middle of all those thoughts, 2 Corinthians 10:5 popped into my mind: “We take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ.”
I definitely was not doing that.
Then I thought about Philippians 4:8, where we’re told to think about whatever is true, noble, right, pure, lovely, and admirable. I wasn’t doing much of that either.
It made me realize how quickly my thoughts can shape the way I feel. I can keep feeding frustration until it grows, or I can stop and ask God to help me redirect my mind.
Isaiah 26:3 says, “You will keep in perfect peace those whose minds are steadfast, because they trust in you.”
That morning, I don’t think the problem was the side of the bed I woke up on. It was where I allowed my mind to go after I got up.
I’m learning that peace often starts with paying attention to what I’m choosing to think about.