Scattered to Gathered | Scatterbrained
Have you ever felt scattered in your mind or thoughts? Like you just feel everywhere all in one moment?
A quick AI Overview on Google says some common causes of feeling scatterbrained are:
· Stress: Stress can disrupt your attention, memory, breathing, and sleep.
· Information overload: too much information can make it difficult to gather your thoughts.
Information overload? But in my sarcastic voice I ask, how could that be?
Okay, seriously, I get it. We get overloaded trying to get better, be better, trying to hold it all together, so we listen to 25 podcasts on all the things we worry about, watch 5 sermons, view 50 shares on social media from friends about overcoming stress, read all the books, say yes to all the You Version Bible plans…and while it’s all good stuff…we overload ourselves! By the time we’re done, we don’t know what we want to respond to first, try next, or even attempt to pray about, so we simply hold it all in. Talk about overload! And every day, we just keep adding more to the stress load.
Rather than trying everything that we watch or read, what if we just applied what we already know? We don’t always need God to tell us something new; sometimes we just need to go back to what we already know He’s told us and keep practicing that. Just like the Israelites were scattered (refer to last week’s “With-ness” post) so can our minds be scattered.
One morning, several months ago, I was reading the Word but I hadn’t really been with Jesus. What do I mean? I was so scattered trying to focus on all the things I had to accomplish that I wasn’t focused on Jesus who could help get me through it all. And it only took one phone call for me to have a near nervous breakdown!
The phone call came as I was reading. It was actually a facetime to me and my husband from our oldest son. It’s not often that we get a video call from our son at 6:15am, so I immediately got nervous when I saw my phone light up with his image. He proceeded to tell us that when he was walking out to his car to leave for work, there was no car to be found. It had been stolen. The only thing he could show us on the facetime video was the broken glass that was scattered on the ground where his car was once parked.
My mind was already full of the workday ahead, along with a job transition soon to come. And don’t forget—Eli has an orthodontist appointment today and tennis practice this afternoon. Oh yeah, did I mention that our middle son, Isaiah, was debating the idea of college (if he should go, where he should go, what he would major in)? Plus, if all of these thoughts weren’t enough, and this is huge, are you sitting down? I think I forgot to suck in my belly when I was talking to the women’s group last night! I bet my belly was hanging out all over the place the whole time.
Okay, back to the car being stolen. What are we going to do? I already had a lot of thoughts going through my head and this was one more stress to add to the mix.
As you can see, I was scattered.
Why can’t I just get it together like everyone else? I was telling myself I don’t have capacity for all of this. I was trying to control everything on the inside and show that I had it all together on the outside. Similar to the Israelites, I was in captivity in my mind and had disunity in my heart. All those worries didn’t really need to be worried about. I just needed to take a healthy pause and begin working through them. Instead, I was pacing in worry.
John 15:5 shows Jesus lovingly directing us for these types of moments: “I am the vine; you are the branches. The one who remains (or abides) in me and I in him produces much fruit, because you can do nothing without me.”
Jesus was encouraging His disciples to keep a continued connection and relationship with him even though He was about to depart from them. Yet, He was also telling them that it’s a choice on their part. Abiding is something they (and we) must choose. It is up to us to carry Jesus throughout our day. To take a pause and pray. To put down social media and instead, just listen to Him. We need to take Him with us out the door— a continued connection. A with-ness like we talked about last week.
Me trying to fix it all on my own was not producing any growth. I was dry and thirsty because I was not dependent upon the Living Water that so desperately needed the dams of control removed so He could flow through me.
All of my scattered thoughts were nothing that He couldn’t take control over in His sovereign power. All things have potential for beauty to be found but only when we surrender them to God’s good hands.
Goodness is a fruit of the Spirit and just like fruit takes time to grow, we need to be patient WITH Jesus by our side. God’s promise is that one day, we will no longer be scattered physically or mentally. But until that day, we can still trust that He will bring us through.
When I finally sat with Him, prayed, and released all of my scattered thoughts to Jesus, guess what? Each issue worked itself out. Like weeds no longer scattered, they became a beautiful arrangement of God’s faithfulness.
We have to get intentional with our time with Jesus before we can be intentional in life.