in my mind.

Everyone has to think about this...  Think about the version of you that you would be if you were in your element, fully alive, living your dream... the dream that God had planned out when he made you. If you have that image in your mind, and then you look in the mirror - I think we can all see there's a gap there. Don't you sometimes wish there was some sort of Photoshop for life? We're a Photoshop culture. We wish that we could erase a few of the character flaws we have. We could accentuate some of the good and nice things about ourselves, and airbrush over something deeply ingrained in who we are.  We buy into the idea of changing what's happening on the outside. We're about style over substance. What we need is a Photoshop for the soul. Something that changes more than how we externally appear. We need to become something on the inside. Become the "ME" that you believe you were meant to be. The only way to close that gap is to believe. Believe in something, someone. Maybe it's God.

There's so much in our lives that we can believe in. But, in order to gain that new sense of belief, we have to let go. We have a lot regret. We have things in our past that we need to feel forgiven for, in order to feel some freedom. Maybe you committed a crime. Maybe you were unkind to your parents. Maybe you were too harsh with your children. Maybe you were too distant with your partner. Maybe you wasted your time on drugs. Maybe you wasted your life on alcohol. These things mount up and they become regret. These things become more than just things that have happened to us. They become us, and they anchor us down... and when that anchor hooks us, we are then stuck. You have become that person.

I have always been fascinated by Edgar Allan Poe. The most famous Poe story is probably "The Tell Tale Heart", which also happens to be my personal favorite. To summarize, the central figure of TTTH commits a murder and buries the body in his basement. He continues on with his life, tries to forget about the crime he has committed, but he cannot allow himself to forget, and it begins to drive him insane. His worry is heightened, as he becomes so paranoid that he believes he hears the heart beat of his victim from downstairs. You realize, of course, that it's not the heart beat of his victim he hears, but rather that of his own. He breaks out in a sweat, he is driven to madness - for that heart beat is always there, it is the ultimate roadblock. It becomes the anchor on his future, being held down by his past. We live TTTH every day. There are things that have happened to us that we think we have dealt with from our past, but are very much with us in the present.

Secret sin cannot coexist with inner peace. We have to be able to dump our past that is full of regret. Somewhere in the Psalms of the Bible, it reads "What joy there is for those rebellion is forgiven". What joy there is to live your life in the open, and be honest. Stop trying to hide your regret, stop trying forget your mistake.... open yourself up to them. Once you do that, you can find forgiveness. Owning up to the things you do ultimately releases the shame, as well. There's that voice inside of you that exists, that only rears it's ugly head when you do something you regret. "It's not just that you did that", the voice tells you, "but because you did that, you're awful. You're stupid. You're ugly. You're not worthwhile. You're a loser." This voice disregards the things you've done, but rather targets who you are. It makes you believe it, because our minds have been so influenced by the wrong thing.

The battle is not in our behavior, it's in our brains. We have to think new thoughts. We have to think in new ways. No, of course, there is no 'delete' button for our old memories. There is difficulty in breaking old habits.  We wrestle with ourselves over these old patterns that we are so used to following. Renew your mind. Feed and focus. What we feed into our minds and what we allow in is very important. It determines, I feel, in large measure who we become. Out of that, what we choose to focus on determines our behavior. The battle is fought there. If you don't fight, or if you're a passive recipient, and you just let anything come into your mind, there is a vastly different outcome than any of us want to experience... a different outcome than who we want to be. We feed our minds with no regard to the purity of life. Our lives are shaped by what comes into our minds.

If you can worry, you can meditate. You don't have to sit cross-legged or something like that. Meditating is just to turn a thought over in your head. Think about how things relate to your life. Chew on it. Focus it. The mind has this insanely precise way of focusing on something. Don't try to resist, but replace. Set your mind on things that exist inside you. It's a fantastic place to focus. Things happen with focus.

Sometimes it's necessary to pause our lives and ask what we're feeding ourselves. Search. Look around. Find what's here, now. Am I judgmental? Am I critical? Am I mean? Am I anxious? Am I defensive? Am I envious? Fix your mind on the good stuff. Feed your mind what's true... the honorable things in life, the things that are pure and true. Honorable and trustworthy. Lovely.