Bad days

They happen to everyone.
Most people shake them off.
For us perfectionistic, analytical types they can become proof of our worst fears about ourselves. They become evidence of our failure, our inability to rise above the circumstances. We can get into a loop of backward thinking. We think that these lapses are actually the accurate measure of our life. We might say things like, 'I always cave under pressure' or 'I can never get my act together when such-and-such happens.' When in reality, that may not be true at all. We simply may not be counting the days we succeed.

You see we each have what Psychologists call a negativity-bias. What this means is that we tend to attribute more weight or value to those negative events/words/thoughts than the positive ones. It's understandable. They hurt. There is a designated part of our brain that diligently records these painful experiences, burning them into our brain matter. Its called our hypothalamus. When things go wrong we have a store of 'evidence' to back up the fact that we are always failing/disappointing others/getting hurt/making mistakes. In reality, it is just our trusty hypothalamus drawing links and presenting its supporting evidence.

From a statistical viewpoint, this 'evidence' is actually not so trustworthy at all. It is drawn from all the most negative experiences in our lives. That means that half (or more) of the information is missing! Would you trust any election if only the negative votes were counted? And yet often this is what we do to ourselves! We only count the evidence of our failure, our hurt, or bad experiences.

This is why God repetitively tells us in His word to meditate on the good. To cast down thoughts that rise against what we know to be true. Note the word 'know' not 'feel' Sometimes things simply do not feel true. To say 'I am more than a conqueror in Christ' does not feel true when I've spent the day yelling at the kids, battling a panic attack or failing to get on top of my to do list. But guess what? It is no less true than on that day when I was mum of the year, snapped my anxiety and did my errands before morning break! The great thing about God's word is that it does not change according to our circumstances or our feelings or our successes or our failures. It stands apart and separate from us and is the definitive measure of truth; the plumb line by which we can measure our worth and all of our happenings.

The hypothalamus has its place. It is protective by nature, serving as a warning to avoid certain situations/people/cycles. Out of place, it can distort our perspective and present faulty evidence that feels truer than the breath within us.

Good thing we have the unwavering measure of who we are, recorded on the pages of our Bibles and whispered into our hearts by the Holy Spirit.

Bad days are not proof of our failure or evidence that we will never get on top.
Bad days are simply those days when we have to fight harder to believe the truth.