captivating thoughts

My brain is way over stimulated so maybe getting some thoughts out will help. This weekend's marriage enrichment time has been wonderful but it has produced mega thoughtfulness on my part. That's not uncommon in me with my melancholy personality. I process and process and process any information. I suppose I'm a melancholy personality, someone clarify for me what you think for I can't remember. I know I overthink everything to the point that it's ridiculous and it keeps me from thinking about what I need to think about. In fact, Mike and I were relating with some new old friends at lunch today how I used to ask him, "What are you thinking right now? What's going through your mind, whatever it is tell me." And he would say "Nothing!" I'm like, "Mike, there can't be nothing going through your brain, you're always thinking something, right?" And he's like, "No, you really can NOT be thinking all the time. There really can be no thought at any given moment." I'm still not sure I buy it but right now I wish I could do that. Just being and thinking nothing. All this to say: I often miss the forrest for the tree. Make sense? I guess I began thinking about totally irrelevant things today during the sessions and it has the potential to drive me crazy.

Thankfully,a friend gently reminded me earlier today, when I was having trouble focusing my thoughts, that II Corinthians 10:5 says:

We demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ.

When she quoted this to me it was a breath of fresh air and freed me so much to not let my thoughts overtake me.

I've made it a goal over the past few months to meditate on Ephesians 4:29 where Paul writes:

Don't let any unwholesome talk come out of your mouths, only what is useful for building others up according to their need, so that it may benefit those who listen."

In fact, I blogged about it then I think. At any rate, I can promise you that I've failed so many times while wrestling with this passage; but I can also see some slow progress (some of you might not think so but bear with me please) Over my lifetime I've learned lots of scripture and I'm obsessive about reading but sometimes I choose quantity over quality. This is the first time that I've honed in on one short little thought for so long and it's been incredible. I want to make it a life practice. God has whispered and yelled, if you will, the words of Eph. 4.29 to the point that my thoughts SOMETIMES don't make it out of my mouth. I've very much internalized it.

Maybe I got the cart before the horse, though, maybe I need to focus my attention for a while on taking each thought captive. Then I wouldn't have to worry so much about what comes out of my foot-shaped mouth being offensive, negative, argumentative, complaining, sarcastic, etc. To sum it up, I would have less trouble with the unwholesome talk. Or maybe I should just not talk so much! My wheels are turning on this. Taking thoughts captive so that they're obedient to Christ would totally solve the unwholesome talk issue for me. Any helpful comments about how to take thoughts captive and make them obedient are welcome. Tell me your thoughts. I remember a Bible study I did one time where this was one of the lessons or chapters or something. Man, I wish it weren't packed up somewhere in a box. I miss my books!

Maybe I can unpack this verse some more later after I've had some time to think, since that's what I like to do so much!