A Prison for your Thoughts

The brain is a wonderful part of the human body. In it, emotions, memories, learning and motility are controlled through a unique and intricate system of neurons and other supporting cells, that, in unison maintain you healthy and alert. Our brains can store our memories and in it, we analyze our thoughts.

Thoughts, are an important component of the mind that distinguishes us from the rest of the mammals. We can have positive thoughts such as the birth of a child or negative thoughts such as those of neglect and abuse. These thoughts, via a fascinating and complex process, have the potential of becoming a part of your memory.

Recently, I learned that some researchers believe that adults are able to recall more vividly the negative events in their life than elderly people. I wondered about this. Why does the majority of our life linger on the bad thoughts and not the good ones?

Until now, the majority of my life was full of negative thoughts that prevented me from getting closer to God. My mind became a prison for my thoughts. The first memory of such an example began when I was five years old. During a fall night, my dad came home late after attending his mother, my grandmother, who was in the hospital. My mother was boiling water in the kitchen and was waiting for him to tell her about his hospital visit. Instead, my father said he was tired and went to brush his teeth. I followed my father. I was worried and wanted to ask him more about Grandma. However, before I could get a single word out of my mouth, my father ran to the kitchen.

I wasn’t sure what had happened so I quickly followed him. I scanned the kitchen and found it had changed. The pot that was in the stove was now in the floor. My mother that was calming boiling water now had a look of fear in her eyes as she was cornered between the wall and my father’s hands. As she attempted to scream weak words came from her mouth. My father’s grip on her throat must have been incredibly strong. Since no audible voice came out of her mouth, she decided to scratch his face. After several attempts, she managed to scratch him on his left cheek. Big mistake.

He went to grab the pot from the floor, which I am guessing was to hit her with it. As he crouched down to pick up the pot, she managed to loosen from his grip. Immediately, she ran to the living room. Unfortunately, my dad was fast and managed to grab her by the arm. He turned her around towards him and began slapping her hard. Then, he grabbed her head and started banging it against the wall.

I was afraid. I screamed, “Stop! Please stop!” without any results. So, I decided to push my father away from my mother. I dug my little feet firmly in the ground and with all my strength I pushed. However, all I accomplished was to squeeze my hands in between their stomachs. This seemed to work because soon after, my father and mother looked at me and stopped. And just like that my father went to his room, my mother went to the guest room, and I was alone in the living room, full of questions and thoughts.

That night, I couldn’t sleep. I cried and cried not understanding what had just happened. “It is my fault,” I muttered. “I must be a very bad person, if they had to fight that way,” I thought. Days went by and no one spoke about the incident. Every day that went by, my thoughts progressively tortured me more and more. Days became weeks, weeks became months, months became years. On numerous occasions, I was the only witness to the domestic abuse that occurred at home. And every time it happened, no one spoke to me for days. The silence drove me literally "crazy".

That single event caused, in time, my thoughts to evolve from “It is my fault” to “I am so unworthy”. Towards my pre-teen years, my feelings of unworth were so great that I did not look at anyone directly in the eyes. I would not dare. I was afraid that if people would see me, they could point out that I was a bad person. Even when I heard from others on God’s love for me, I couldn’t see it. In my mind, God could never love such an unworthy person such as myself.

For many years, I was a prisoner of my thoughts. I was enveloped in this dark world of thoughts, emotions, and misconceived notions of the events surrounding me. During this time, my relationship with God became stagnant and no growth in my spiritual life occurred. I know that many of us could relate to this anecdote, in one way or another.

When I started to write this blog, I had no idea that God would show me clip by clip my life. I never realized that for every instance in my life where I felt unloved and misunderstood, God was there hugging me, loving me and telling me “Its OK if your life is not good because I have always been and will always be here for you”.

In my opinion, you have two choices: (1) you can allow your thoughts to control you and prevent you from experiencing the much needed change that God wants in your life or (2) you can hold those thoughts “by the horns” and say that with the authority given to you by Christ who died in the cross for your sins, you control them. The choice is yours.