Renewing Your Mind

“I can’t do this,” I said into the phone, my hands shaking and holding my breath to hear his reaction. Silence. I double check to see if he hung up. He must hate me right now. Did I make a mistake?

That was the last phone call I had with my first boyfriend. I had just finished my first week of college and of course, that time in one’s life comes with so much change, it feels as though your head is spinning at 100 miles per hour. But this moment felt like I just slammed my foot on the gas pedal. I knew I had to break things off - something was missing. And as I look back, Jesus was the missing piece.

For the course of our 5-month dating relationship, I had desperately tried to fit myself into a mold of what I thought a girlfriend should be. I constantly compared myself to other girls on social media and believing the lie that I wasn’t enough.

My head wanted to stay in the comfort of wanting to be wanted. But my heart knew otherwise. My heart needed Jesus.

It’s almost too easy to conform to the unsaid expectations set by other people. The desire to feel important and belonged is valid, but it can quickly turn sour if you let it sit too long in the fridge of your heart and overtake your life. When it hits the point of changing who you are and gearing all of your focus and worry on what others think of you, it’s time to take a step back and access the situation of your heart.

To be honest, I have always (and probably will always) struggled with the anxiety of how others perceive me. Raise your hand if you get in your head too much!

Five-plus years later, I still struggle with which way to take when I reach a crossroads. My jaw clenches and my shoulders become heavy-laden with the weight of the world. God, I can’t do this on my own. That’s all He wants us to say because truly, we can not go through this life on our own. We live in a broken world where our reality is heartache, betrayal, fear, grief, and corruption. Friendships fade away, harsh words tear down, and anxiety and depression paralyze so many.

Romans 12, verse two says, “do not conform to this world, but to be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good acceptable and perfect.”

Renew your mind with the life-giving words of God and you will see the fruit. The enemy wants us to believe that there is no other side of the trial and testing we are in and plants seeds of doubt - I feel stuck and ashamed. There is nowhere left to go.

Let these next few words be a reminder to you: God uses our trials to draw us closer to Him and to show us that with Him, we are so much stronger than what we think of ourselves.