Obsessive

November 17, 2020

Jennie Allen

Bible teacher, founder of IF:Gathering

"Count it all joy, my brothers, when you meet trials of various kinds, for you know that the testing of your faith produces steadfastness. And let steadfastness have its full effect, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing.  If any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask God, who gives generously to all without reproach, and it will be given him. But let him ask in faith, with no doubting, for the one who doubts is like a wave of the sea that is driven and tossed by the wind. For that person must not suppose that he will receive anything from the Lord; he is a double-minded man, unstable in all his ways." - James 1:2-8 

WHAT'S UNDERNEATH YOUR OBSESSION?

I believe that this is such an important issue, because our brain is hard-wired to solve problems. When we get in the midst of a year like 2020 when we feel like there are a million problems, our brain is working really hard to try to solve it all. What happens is we become obsessive! This is so convicting to me. I actually thought when I was going to teach this one that maybe I wasn't so bad at this, but then I started noticing what I do to cope. One of my coping mechanisms is to get my car cleaned. I know that sounds like a healthy strategy, but the reality is it's a controlling thing. I love my car being clean! Let me tell you how this moves from healthy to psychotic. I have four kids and two of them are at college, but they come home a lot. My daughter came home a few weeks ago, and I just had my car cleaned. My car is always pretty clean, even when my life and my house are a mess. I think it's because it's a domain I can control. My daughter is home, and she takes my other daughter in my car to go get matcha. They put theirs in the cup holder, but they put mine in the backseat in a drink carrier with no cup holder. Even though there were cup holders right there! The whole thing spills all over the back of my car. No big deal! But I have to go get a pretty expensive detail to get it clean. I didn't overreact. In fact, I was very happy I had an excuse to get the fancy detail I hadn't gotten in forever. It was kind of a win! Then Kate comes home again a week later, we're running errands, and she brings a coffee in the car. The coffee doesn't fit in the cup holder, so she just sets it on top of the cup holder. So when I turn my car, the entire thing spills all over my car. This is the second time this has happened and I just had my car detailed the week before and I lost my mind. I rage at my college child. I lost my mind! I don't often yell or rage, but I raged at her. I am giving her a full-blown lecture. 

What I want to say about this, since I've analyzed it, is my reaction to my car is not necessarily materialistic. I don't really care about the car at all. I care about control. It's the only little domain in my life that I really do control. My house is a bit crazy. There's really not another place where I feel ownership and control over. I'm not OCD about everything, but the two things I'm OCD about is my bed and my car. No germs in my bed ever. And don't screw up my car. But whenever work gets stressful or something feels totally out of control, I go get my car washed. It's weird. But it's deep. 

In the pandemic, all the car washes were closed. They would let you drive through, but you couldn't vacuum or do anything else. Let me say, too, that we have a whole team of people at IF:Gathering that I'm trying to support, we have health issues and crises around us, we have friends that are going through hell, we were going through real life stuff! We weren't living in some weird, happy existence where my car not being washed was actually a big deal. It's that thing that gets in your brain and you fixate on it and think it will make your life better. I'm using my car as a stupid example, but let me give you some other examples. How many of you think about your weight, what you're eating, and calories a lot? How many of you think about brands, clothes, and shopping a lot? How many of you think about what your kids are going to do for college or kindergarten a lot? We tend to get obsessive when life is out of control. We fixate on something we can control. That's what I'm doing - right? It's not the car itself. It's that I can clean it and I can keep it clean. 

THE PROMISE IN OUR TRIALS

In James 1:2-8 there is a promise of steadfastness that comes from trials. That is not exactly what obsessive behavior is communicating to me or to the people I love. It is not a steadfastness. It is psycho. I am losing my mind over spilled coffee. It is not reasonable or steadfast. We have to notice those things. What is our mind thinking about? How do we enter our thoughts and bring life and truth to them if we don't know what we're thinking about? When I lost my mind on Kate I had to really step back and ask, what was that? All I had to do was clean it up with a little Resolve - I didn't even need to go back to the detail. So what was it? Why was I acting so crazy? I think in my mind, if I can keep everything in a certain way, pain and suffering can not touch me. That is just not true. It's so unfortunate that it's not true, but we can not protect our lives from pain and suffering. I love that James says "various kinds" - when your kid spills coffee, when you go through financial hardship, when your in a fight with your friend or spouse, when work piles up, when you don't know whether to send your kid to public or private school - those trials are building a perseverance in you. When it has its full effect, you are perfect and complete and lacking in nothing - that probably won't happen on this side of Heaven. We will be a work in progress until we get to Heaven. But that perfect and complete is happening to us! Things are being worked out for good in our lives. We are being transformed into the image of God. These are all promises from scripture. It is happening to us! I think that is the coolest promise of this. In this crazy year, I believe the fruit of it will be steadfastness. I believe we'll be less obsessed with control because we realized we don't have any. Those small things we're trying to control aren't helping us, they're just distracting us from the work God wants to do in and through you. 

I have a friend I got to have coffee with recently and she was telling me about a struggle with eating and it being so consuming in her mind. She recently had such a breakthrough and something had changed her and she was free and she was radically different. The main thing she was grateful for is that she had margin to think about other people because she wasn't so consumed with eating or food. The lie of the enemy is that in our search for control and trying to protect ourselves and build this perfect life, he has control of us. The irony is we won't have a perfect and complete life, but God says if you receive the trials you will face, he will produce perfection and completeness in you. Your life won't be perfect, but the work I do in you will be. That's the promise.

Q&A

I have obsessed over food, money, my appearance, and my kids for so long and I don't even know where to begin. Where do I start?

You start by doing what you just did in that question. You start by laying it out. What are the things you're thinking about and why are you thinking about them so much? Why are they consuming your thoughts? Why are you giving unhealthy or disproportionate reactions to things that are going wrong in certain parts of your life? Is there a deeper desire? Is there a deeper thing that you want or need? You start by writing your thoughts down and looking for a theme. There's probably a theme over all of it. If you're worried about your appearance, money, and your kids, there's probably an overwhelming theme. I think about my book Nothing to Prove and I talked about struggling with an eating disorder in college and into adulthood. I look back at my performance issues that carried me into my 30s and how I thought I was disappointing people at the beginning of IF:Gathering constantly. I saw this theme. These were all different subjects and different stages of life, but there was a theme. I was trying to prove myself. You can usually lay it all out and see a theme. When you find that theme, that's the thing you've got to fight. You have to realize it's a lie, fight it like the devil, and use community and prayer and all the weapons that 2 Corinthians 10 talks about to destroy strongholds. You have to treat it like a stronghold and fight it. 

How would I know if something I'm passionate about has become an unhealthy obsession?

The car is a great example! Caring about having a clean car is a great thing, but my reaction to my family is so disproportionate to what they've done. I have to notice that my reaction is a sign that I have made an idol out of something. I had made an idol out of controlling things I can't control. When it goes from a passion, like eating healthy and working out, to you can't eat a cheeseburger when that's all they're serving at a restaurant, and not because of an allergy, but just because you can't have an unhealthy meal, that's when you're making an idol out of something. You're trying to control something so much that you can't even enjoy a meal with friends. That's my gauge on that.

How can my faith change what I fixate on?

Hebrews says fix your eyes on Jesus. The only thing we're to fix our mind on is Jesus Christ. In fixing our eyes on Jesus, we are to run our race that's set before us and throw off the hindrances and sins that entangle us. There's a story line of activity, that we're running and in motion on mission, doing the thing God set us on earth to do all the while we're fixing our eyes on Jesus. The sin and weight can be those distractions - I love that it says sin and hindrances. Sometimes a hindrance is just a distraction that builds up over time that is taking away that fixation on Jesus and the race he's called you to. Noting what those are and realizing that even simple, positive things that get too much of your mind and energy, can really start to take away from the mission God has given you. Your primary calling is to be with God and think of others.

I feel like more discipline and dying to self has not worked in battle against my fixations. What am I missing?

When I had an eating disorder, it took a lot of time to get into that mess and it took a lot of time to get out of it and change the patterns of my mind. There are times for medical intervention when you have diagnosable OCD or an eating disorder, so I'll say that first and foremost. Be sure you check out medically and make sure you don't need help chemically or mentally. Either way, even if you do need medical help, we still all have to do the work of training and disciplining our mind. It's not easy or fun. It's training our mind to Godliness. It takes work. It's training. Taking a thought captive is an active thing. I think we've got to not be afraid of the work. You're not miraculously going to get out of this space. You have to do the work of digging out. But that work is possible and it matters and it can change your trajectory of your time in life. I look back at the time in my life when I struggled with an eating disorder and I praise God he set me free. I praise God he put the conviction in my heart and the tools to dig my way out of that. It took time, but it was worth it. But on the other side of that, I have more space and margin to think about others.