If you are having trouble seeing the good in something, turn your head and look elsewhere. That is the lesson I learned yesterday. God provided the way.
Yesterday, I was having a terrible struggle with this verse. Really, all week I couldn’t get the evil from my work off my mind, and I was having trouble seeing the good and the lovely, the right and the pure. I felt like seeing my husband and baby at night should have been enough for me, but seeing them wasn’t changing anything, not matter how happy I was to be home with them. During work, I would pause and look at photos of my baby, but it didn’t get the bad and the evil off my mind.
I think it’s common for parents, mothers especially, to feel like the baby they love and longed for should be the answer to all their mental and emotional struggles, but it isn’t. You don’t get a free pass from sin and struggle, depression or anxiety, when you get married or when you have a baby, and if you expect that you just add extra pressure on your family relationships. Getting married or having a child doesn’t solve everything and it doesn’t, in itself change your heart and mind, or other circumstances. Neither your husband, nor your baby, is your savior. They do not alleviate your need for God in your life.
I want this blog to be about my life outside of work, but my mind was refusing to think about anything else. Since my field is human trafficking, this is not an unusual week for me, but most of my week was spent reading Facebook messages from men, mostly married men, trying to have sex with young girls for money. That is the PG way to describe the R or XXX rated content that my mind gets fed 40 hours a week. I was having a hard time following this verse, without my mind, fast as anything flashing back to something from work.
Until, I got hungry and decided to walk to lunch.
Creation is am amazing thing. God gifted us with nature, which contains overwhelming beauty. The beauty of creation was even more powerful than the perversions I was seeing. Finally, for seemingly the first time all week, I could follow this verse. My mind felt released from the chains of darkness and could focus on the lovely, pure, and worthy of praise.
What do you do when you feel at war with your mind and cannot see the good? Nature? Reading? Maybe for you it is the smell of your baby? Exercise? Prayer?
God Provides for Us 
It was such a surprise to me to discover that I was still the same old me after I got married. It was a bit of a disappointment honestly. It was a valuable lesson to learn that no matter our circumstances life doesn’t feel much different. All those people we envy have most of the same joys and sorrows that are common to man.
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