Dark Places of the Mind

What do you do when you’re in a dark place? When your mind is racing in shadows, fighting to hold on to beauty, you can learn how to let go and discover victory.

The Prison Within Yourself

The harsh wall of the cinderblock cell, cold beneath the tips.

A flash, a turn, everything looks maddeningly the same. Dark seeps in deeper now as all hopes for escape fade to not, outstretched arms between the bars do you no good.

Or perhaps you’ve assumed the fetal position on the floor, totally collapsed, outside hiding in.

You don’t know what the crime was and you’re even lesser to know how to break out.

Maybe there was a time when the light shone through the slats, but for now, darkness reigns.

The prison within yourself.

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Trapped.

Somehow, throughout the course of your day or your week or your life,  you managed to locate that jail within, sentence yourself to an eon of some misery, and throw away the key.

As I write this, I’m shamefully sitting in my car alone, having narrowly escaped the onslaught of Where are you goings as I quickly backed out of my driveway, tears in eyes, breath held fast, hand clutching heart. I’m at the end of a long day of overwhelm –

if it wasn’t one, two, three, four, or five that pulled me down, it was six, seven, eleven, thirteen, and seventeen that washed over me and eighteen, nineteen and twenty-seven that completely suffocated and did me in.

An onslaught of too much, as I number the burdens and worries and decisions that have piled upon me. As those surmounting atrocities grew, I shrunk smaller and tucked myself away inside my little prison, isolated from all I know.

It doesn’t feel good in there.

It never does.

Self and Darkness are never a good mix.

Either you’re breathing in lies by the second, overcome by waves of anxiety, melting into a puddle of depression, or have fully embraced hopelessness as you make drastic plans for some horrible future fate.

None of those are good scenarios.

None.

Many of us have seen dark places – whether they be more dramatic than my own or a bit more subdued. Something triggers, we tumble over a sheer cliff of unhappiness…but, even so, these mental scenes aren’t always specific happenings or occurrences…

in the difficulties of life, we can reside in a dark place on a continual basis for days…months…even years.

This is quite the fall from the peaceful environment we all want to sustain and bask in every day. Amidst the tangled mess of this harsh mental prison, how did you come to find yourself in such a trap?

Where did this all start?

The Beginning of The End

For the purpose of this post and to simplify, we’re going to discuss this pitfall as separate from prior traumas and underlying foundational fissures cracking our persona.

Past harms will leave us wounded and need much sifting and sorting to find that solid foundation we so desperately need. The truth you engage here will be key in such journey to healing. Relatively speaking, this all goes hand in hand anyway, as the point of attack commences upon the same spot – the mind.

The inception of such events and statuses in our lives do not come about lightly, nor do they transpire just minutes prior to take off.

We endure a disservice to ourselves if we’re not aware of a keen enemy,
“prowling lion looking for someone to devour”
(1 Peter 5:8-9)

YES –

the devil is active in our everyday world –

seen in Job 1:7 with his latest wanderings as “going to and fro on the earth, and from walking up and down on it.”

Should we have cause to doubt this, a simple brief glance at daily news lines is quick to display much of the enemy’s work. Impossible to escape much of the tragedy in our environment, downfalls and moments of sin become daily realities in our weakness.

Sin is crouching at the door. Its desire is contrary to you, but you must rule over it. 
– Genesis 4:7

You must rule over it.

We must rule over sin that so readily strikes soul and being. Akin to a war general plotting his military tactics yet – unlike most generals in the midst of battle – we have a clue as to where the enemy resides and his own plans to advance…

We hold the map to his own schemes of surprise and attack. 

How on earth do we hold such a valuable tool? 

~ Because we know Satan is a deceiver – he is the father of lies (John 8:44). And a lie is received and believed first in the mind.

2 Corinthians 4:4 highlights his destructive effects on our mind: 

“The god of this age has blinded the minds of the unbelievers, to keep them from seeing the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ.”

~ We view it in the stories of scripture. Most notable is Satan himself in the garden, deceiving Eve into partaking of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

~ We can discern it when we take careful assessment of our past falterings…
think back –
recall a recent time when you crashed and tumbled –
how did it start?
Often it can be difficult to pick apart and analyze something like that, but when you do, you’ll see that many times it started with a thought, either outright lie or not complete truth, and frequently attached to an emotion. A seed of untruth, allowed to take root and grow, rather than be weeded out and tossed aside with the chaff…

No – we don’t have all the specific answers as to how he’s going to target us, but we have enough to get us going on the battle field.

And when we know the mind is the enemy’s main mode of infiltration, we can plan our own line of defense.

The Light Shines in the Dark

Oh sweet relief, be cheered to know our weapons are not of this world.

Turn your imagination from a battle fought on earthly soil to one held in the spiritual places, heavenly weapons forged by him, a destined story with eternal impact.

For the weapons of our warfare are not of the flesh but have divine power to destroy strongholds.
2 Corinthians 10:4

Divine power.

Exactly what we need, the only thing brazen enough to conquer dark places so keenly felt.

See Ephesian 6:10-20 for a beautifully arrayed list of those weapons of war God so provides.

One verse ahead in our Corinthians verse reveals a secret key to winning the fight in our minds, precious nugget to cling to and practice daily – hourly – moment by moment.

 We destroy arguments and every lofty opinion raised against the knowledge of God, and take every thought captive to obey Christ (verse 5)

There it is, balm to our weakened souls – 

We take every thought captive to obey Christ.

Power is found in what we let take root in our minds.

Those toxic thoughts command certain power over us.

Letting the world and all its crazy run amuck in our thoughts without any censoring to filter out the glum, we’re swayed…heart affected…morphed by the intake.

Repeat this scenario a hundredfold over its course, and you have a person laying hold of all the detriment of the world, amongst other things.

Believe me, I am too painfully aware of this, as this was such rancid foundation of self for me from my earliest years…had I even been a believer at that point, had I known vicious trauma coming to ransack the decades as I believed each and every lie…

yet the all-knowing sovereignty of God turns the hands of time and healing comes another way…

and a difference can be made for those currently caught in the sour habit of filtering in the negative.

Have you realized that most of your unhappiness in life is due to the fact that you are listening to yourself instead of talking to yourself? Take those thoughts that come to you the moment you wake up in the morning. You have not originated them but they are talking to you, they bring back the problems of yesterday, etc. Somebody is talking. Who is talking to you? Your self is talking to you. Now this man’s treatment [in Psalm 42] was this: instead of allowing this self to talk to him, he starts talking to himself. “Why art thou cast down, O my soul?” he asks. His soul had been depressing him, crushing him. So he stands up and says, “Self, listen for moment, I will speak to you.”‘ 

– Martyn Lloyd Jones, Spiritual Depression

Without a doubt, I am truly convinced of this sad truth:

We do not talk to ourselves enough. 

Instead of taking the downcast captive, we listen to the murmurings of a thousand feelings. It is all too easy to let the thoughts slide in and out of our heads and our hearts, to let the train of emotion run its course and take us for an unbecoming ride.

As we delve into our day, inevitably we’ll encounter every manner of thought whisking in and out of our conscience.

The ones to take up residence and present the hard, yet lovely, truths in accordance with the Word will lead to thanksgiving…peace…righteousness.

The ones that defy those truths will lead to…well, definitely not the same.

You’ll know when the toxic ones come…they tend to twist and lead emotions down most unpleasant paths.

Not for a moment give way to a toxic thought…lock it up in the cell of your mind, rather than letting it lock down your own self. Wield your sword (Ephesians 6:10-20) and let the light shine in that dank place as you hold illuminating scripture up to cold, steely prison bars.

Not only does scripture put that thought on trial and sentence it to banishment, the sword is two-edged (Hebrews 4:12).  As it “discerns the thoughts and intentions of the heart” and calls out what is wrong, it brings forth exactly what is right. 

We must be diligent to:

• Extract these infiltrating dour thoughts again and again

• Replace them with truth that clearly speaks against the lie trying to take hold

• Make it a daily habit to press in and be transformed by the renewal of your mind (Romans 12:1)

As we are all creatures of habit, this is, simply put, a matter of steadfast and faithful daily embracing of what is good, lovely, and right (Colossians 3:2-3), after filtering what is NOT in alignment with truth.

Renewing our mind daily in scripture raises the likelihood of quickly catching those unwarranted thoughts.

When our ears, eyes, hearts, minds are used to feeding on truth in daily bread, the brash character of the enemy’s lie can be a quick catch internally. 

Victory Over the Dark Places – It’s Yours

If you’re in that prison today, please know that I feel for you…

I can attest to those emotions of despair, having been inside that dark mental box hundreds, if not thousands, of times in my life.

Whether it’s your Day 1 or 2001, I’m thankful you were able to catch ahold of this post while in your lonely space and are divinely reading this. 

Because that cell is not the end. 

The most glorious news is :

Jesus has the key.

…you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free. – John 8:32

So if the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed. – John 8:36

This walk amidst a broken path was never intended to be unknown in its destination.

He gives amazing promise – the certainty of the battle won. 

For the Lord your God is he who goes with you to fight for you against your enemies, to give you the victory. – Deuteronomy 20:4

I have said these things to you, that in me you may have peace. In the world you will have tribulation. But take heart; I have overcome the world. – John 16:33

For everyone who has been born of God overcomes the world. And this is the victory that has overcome the world—our faith. – 1 John 5:4

The pathway to healing and change may require time, and it is certainly ours to take that needed time. Regardless –

Whether we feel victorious now or later in our struggle with sin, the victory is ours in Him.