Whatever is true...

Sometimes I get stuck.  Sometimes there's just one thing that won't leave me alone.  A thought or a quote, often its a Bible verse.  I'll be trucking along, reading when all in a sudden I can't go on.  I go back and reread a passage over and over again until it sinks into my brain.  Often I'll pick up my Bible the next day expecting to read the next chapter but I find myself fixated on the very same passage as the day before.  It won't let me go. This week that passage is Philippians 4:8:

Finally, brothers, whatever is true,

whatever is noble,

whatever is right,

whatever is pure,

whatever is lovely,

whatever is admirable-if anything is excellent or praiseworthy-think about such things.

Actually, I'm not even stuck on the whole verse.  As I reread I include the whole verse as well as 4-9 as well and everything in these few verses is absolute gold, but what I'm really, truly stuck on is three words.  Whatever is true.

I am told that men and women think differently.  Because of this I expect that most women who read this will sigh inwardly with understanding.  Perhaps the men will be slightly confused but I think not too much.  See, I've had multiple conversations with women about how what we are feeling so often becomes so strong and overwhelming that in our minds it becomes reality and it takes a whole lot of convincing to tell us otherwise.  So much of the running commentary in our brains is packed full of untruths:

"I'm fat"

"I'm ugly"
"No one loves me" 

"I'm no good at anything"

"I'm worthless"

"I'm hopeless"

We get these ideas into our heads and every idea we have is shaped around them.  We obsess over what we eat to be the "perfect body shape." (As if such a thing even exists.  Seriously, ask anyone, even the most beautiful person you know and I can bet they can pinpoint at least one thing they'd like to change if they could.)  We spend obscene amounts of dollars on makeup and clothing to try to look pretty.  We change who we are to try to fit in.  We try to do everything to prove that we can, or we do nothing so no one sees us fail.  We try to be important, to be needed.  We try to change who we are.

We also try to change the past.  We constantly obsess about what we would have done if we could have done things differently:

"If only I hadn't said anything, then she wouldn't be mad at me."

"If only I had made a different choice, then my life wouldn't be falling apart."

"If only I'd fought for him more, then he'd still love me."

We try to change the past by imagining how much better it could have been.  We ask what if, which is such a dangerous, dangerous question.  We also take small things and blow them way out of proportion, both good and bad:

"He smiled at me, that means he likes me and he'll ask me out and we'll get married and I'll name our kids after his great grandparents, I should probably figure out what those are."

"My friend just walked past me and only smiled. And it didn't look like a real smile.  I bet she's mad.  Probably at me.  But really, I'm the one who should be mad at her, because of that one time that she did that one thing.  How dare she be mad at me?"

And now you all are thinking, "That's totally me!" or "She is a crazy person!"

So when I read these three words, "whatever is true," of course I got stuck.  This false thinking permeates so much of our lives.  So, I tried an experiment.  I tried to not think things that were not true.  It turned out way harder than I expected.  But I learned something.  Its way better.  So many of the things that make me upset make me upset because of the untrue proportions I take them to.  

For example, at work right now, we are getting ready for the holiday season.  Soon, it will be getting South Dakota cold and people will be wanting coats and hats and gloves and they're going to want it all to be magical and weigh nothing but keep you as warm as a Jamaican beach in July when its snowing and the wind is howling and the river froze solid 35 degrees earlier.  And they're going to want a very specific hoodie that they knew we carried 5 years ago and they can't believe we don't carry that specific shade of puke green anymore and we ruined Christmas because we didn't have exactly what they wanted.  

Can I tell you something?  Those days and those customers will come.  And the week before Christmas is probably the least full of holiday cheer in retail possible.  But, its not even Thanksgiving yet.  Can I tell you what kind of people go shopping for Christmas gifts before Thanksgiving and coats before the first snow?  The really nice kind. The kind who are not in a hurry and who aren't going to blame you for the fact that their coat doesn't fit and its cold now but we just don't have their size.  So what good is it to me to become anxious about these hypothetical customers now?  Dwelling on the fact that they will come only makes it more irritating when they do.

I knew a young woman once who was convinced that a certain young man and her were destined to be together because they happened to be the only two customers in a coffee shop once and he said hi and they talked and it had to be God putting them together.  Was it any surprise that she was hurt in the end?  What if she had thought about what was true? He was a very friendly guy and a great friend.  She could have gained a wonderful friendship instead of being bitterly disappointed.  I do this to myself all the time.  Instead of dwelling on what I have, I think about what I could have and completely miss out on the joy of what  it was that I had in the first place.

What do you think?  What are some untrue things that we/you dwell on?  What kinds of truths should we be dwelling on?