When I was sick when lyme disease, I kept asking the Lord for His remedy. As much as I wanted to just take medication and be “done with the sickness”, I had much work to do with the Lord in terms of my thoughts. I pleaded to Him regularly for wisdom on what needed to be done. All of a sudden, He showed me a picture:

It was an overgrown garden, full with overgrown weeds that needed to be completely cleared out so that new growth could come. It looked dead, hopeless and overwhelming. I asked God what that meant, and He said it was years of living, but never renewing my mind, letting it go in a sense of letting the enemy plant “weeds” that would choke out any new life that could grow. In turn, that looked like my life at the time and it was time to start weeding my garden. If that was my backyard in real life, I would just hire someone to clean it out, but sometimes life isn’t that easy, is it? Sometimes we want that quick fix, or an easy way out, but then we miss the process and the reward just isn’t the same as if we had done it ourselves. But, if we take the time to take bigger things on, the outcome is beautiful and worth all the sweat and tears!

It was going to be a process, and certainly not an overnight one. I realized how awful my mindset was and how many strongholds (mostly fear and anxiety) I had allowed into my life. The Lord knew I needed a picture in my mind to show me how decades of not weeding, can lead to so many issues, messiness and chaos. We all start with clean soil so to speak when we are children. Over time, our parents, friends, circumstances and experiences have a direct correlation on that spoil and can either lead to unhealthy growth, or growth that can bring life and life abundant. God loves us so much that He gives us the free will to choose.

When I was fighting for my life, Jesus was kind enough to show me the root of the problem, the negative thoughts had a direct impact on my health, body, soul and mind and showed me the key to my healing was going to be renewing my mind. My mind was prone to believe worst-case scenarios, think negatively, never be hopeful, and this robbed me of joy, peace and most importantly receiving the love and blessing of God. I was in a sense “comfortable” in the weeds because it was all that I knew, but God had so much more for my life and although i wasn’t 40 yet, it was almost like a midlife crisis of a reality check of where I was, which was certainly not where God wanted me to be. I chose to believe the voice of the liar, satan, over the voice of truth, Jesus Christ.

The first question I had was, “where do I even start”. He gently whispered, “one thought (or weed) at a time”. I knew it was take some time, but knew if I didn’t obey, it would just keep getting worse and more overwhelming. It started small with things like “God wants to heal me, because in His word, there are so many scriptures about Him dying not only for our sin, but also for our sickness”. Also, believing He loved me so much, even through I wasn’t seeing immediate relief in my body. It also looked like guarding my mind, for example when people with good intentions would tell me worst-case scenarios of people they knew with Lyme. They would say, “oh they are in a wheelchair for the rest of their life”, or “oh it just keeps getting worse and they are bed-ridden all the time”. I could not let fear sink in, but stand up and say, “not today, satan”. Was it easy when that was decades of a bad habit? Absolutely not, because the enemy attacks our weakness because he knows he can gain ground there. But, the good news is, with God, all things are possible! (Matthew 19:26)

If we don’t know truth, it’s essential that we know the word, but one simple verse to help is in Phillipians 4:8 to see the source of the thought, Jesus instructed us to think on, “whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable—if anything is excellent or praiseworthy—think about such things.” Anything outside of that isn’t His will, nor from Him. We need to feed the truth of His word, not “positive thoughts”, but truth, so that we are watering the correct seeds of growth-life and life abundant!