Spiritual Skirmishes
It's okay to just swat away the stupid thoughts that pass through your mind.
Field notes from my actual Ash Wednesday:
It’s 10AM, and I’ve just gotten in from taking child to an appointment (which went great, no stress!), and therefore I’m late feeding the cats. As I put out the cat food I am so mindful that today is a fast day that I actually think in my head: Yeah, that looks good.
I know.
Additional facts:
The cat food is not that good. It’s just dry kibble. Admittedly fairly high-end kibble, and the cats mostly seem to like it, but there is nothing, at all, intrinsic in the cat food to make a human ever, at all, think about snacking on it.
I had plenty to eat on Tuesday. We are not starting the day pre-fasted.
I virtually never eat breakfast.
There is no reason whatsoever that at ten in the morning I should be wistfully contemplating how lucky the cats are that the bishops haven’t given them a fast day.
Conclusion: It’s the Ash Wednesday mind game.
I’m not sure why it took me so long to realize this, but lately it’s come to my attention that I don’t have to give the time of the day to the stupid thoughts that enter my head.
I can literally just be like get thee behind me Satan and then Come Holy Spirit and move on. Swat away the intrusive thought.
Game changer.
Some of you are sighing at the late bloomer, but if you are new to this idea, here are some samples of what it looks like:
I start to get irritated at the SuperHusband about something.
It could be something that happened long in the past, it could be some random innocent thing that is not a fault at all, or it could be an actual thing happening right now that I’m not completely crazy for wishing was slightly different.
In the past I would have been like: Yeah! That guy! and then either branch off into stewing over the thing, or else into spending an ordinate amount of time repenting of my uncharitable thoughts.
Now it’s like: Nah, that’s not a thought I want to be having, there’s nothing helpful here.
If it’s a thing to actually address, I can go straight to just saying, “Hey, excuse me, I need to use half the sink, could you scoot over?” since the thing is probably that he’s standing in front of the sink eating his lunch and then he’ll scoot over like the normal friendly person that he is.
If it’s not even a thing? Like hello I’m thinking about something that happened three years ago, or something that, seriously, why do you care if he eats in front of the sink unless you actually need to use the sink, and at the moment you don’t? I don’t have to waste any further thought on it.
I don’t need to analyze our marriage, or figure out why I’m so traumatized by sink-eating, or mentally justify why my irritability is somehow understandable, or delve into a whole inner examination of what makes me such a wretched sinner that I can’t be nice to a person who just wants to quick eat and then go back to work and now poor Jesus has to listen to me pour my heart out over one stupid half-second thought.
Instead I can just be like, “Nope, not falling for that one, not the life I want to live,” and go back to being a normal happy person who isn’t placing undue importance on ludicrous thoughts.
I’m contemplating a serious issue.
Sometimes people do things that are wrong and hurtful, and we do need to get our head around them.
But as a Christian there are specific attitudes towards wrong-doing that I need to adopt. It’s not a free-for-all. Resentment, unforgiveness, vengeance, plotting of immoral means to solve the situation . . . all of these are off the table.
And yet they come to mind.
They can come to mind even about situations that I’m not otherwise upset over.
Like: I’m having the innocent thought of, “Wow I can’t believe that person did that!” in a situation that turned out to be refreshingly minimal in consequences as serious sins go, and then I segue into suddenly being all hurt and angry despite the consequences having been so trivial. Just gratuitous anger. The person did something shockingly wrong, and yet weirdly it all turned out okay . . . it’s the total beginner class in forgiveness, why aren’t we just rolling with forgive and move on?
So you swat away that intrusion of anger and go back to thinking how nice it is that you don’t have to be immersed in anger, you can have a nice shiny soul and isn’t that better?
Ditto for something serious that happened in the past and did hurt, did cause lasting harm, but which I’ve already worked at forgiving over and over again, and I really truly have cultivated a heart of love towards all involved, and then that sneaky wisp of anger flits in and . . . I don’t have to entertain it.
I don’t have to revisit the fact that yes the hurt was real and the damage was real and I was understandably upset about the whole thing. That’s in the past, the necessary wisdom has been acquired, there is no need for me to relive the misery again.
So sorry, no, out the door intrusive thought, you are not invited, done.
I was attempting to pray well, and my mind wandered.
Sure, sometimes things come to us in prayer that are God’s leading. I was praying the Rosary for one intention and another person in need comes to mind, yes, okay, pray for that person too. Or a to-do item comes to mind, and it’s God reminding you of something important you were going to forget, so okay, write it down on the to-do list then go back to praying as-scheduled.
But what if it’s just like, “Yes Lord, I pray for all the youth receiving Confirmation this weekend, please send your Holy Spirit on them and awaken in their souls . . . yeah I really love hockey, man there’s a women’s professional league now! And what about that game the other night! And . . .”
I don’t have to be all like, maybe God wants me to spend my rosary thinking about hockey. Pray for someone associated with hockey? Sure. But not just be making up reasons why this mystery of the Rosary is somehow the right time to run all our favorite replays to pass the time.
Again, revolutionary: I don’t have to overthink it. I can just say, “Okay hockey’s nice but what about those confirmation kids?” and get back on track.
I don’t have to wonder what it says about me that I had that thought. I don’t have to wonder what it means that it took me a surprisingly long time to even realize I’d starting thinking about hockey while the prayers were being said on autopilot. I don’t have to move into a Deep Discussion of my interior life.
Swat the interruption away and go back to better thoughts.
Distracted again? Swat.
Fundamental issue: Just because a thought enters my head, doesn’t mean that thought is me.
I don’t have to identify myself with that thought — even if it’s something I’m frequently or persistently prone to thinking.
I don’t have to be a sin I don’t want in my life, any more than I have to be a swamp just because I live in a wet climate, and there are mosquitos around, and sometimes I get bit. I’m only the swamp if I choose to actively lay out pools of stagnant water and help the mosquitos breed. I might be surrounded by swamp, plagued by swamp . . . but the swamp isn’t me.
I have more or less an average amount of distractibility. I’m not making light of people who seriously struggle with overpowering intrusive thoughts. Not at all.
Nor am I minimizing the toll taken by fatigue, illness (mental or physical), medication side effects, stress, trauma, loss, or grief. Terrible things happen in life and we can’t just “swat that away.” That would be absurd.
I’m just saying that on an ordinary day, in an ordinary moment, we don’t have to be owned by the fact that sometimes things come into our mind that are not consistent with our Christian morals.
That just happens. It can happen for rational reasons (xyz really is a genuine problem that I need to address, let’s move on to finding godly resolutions to the problem); it can happen because of old thought patterns that haven’t fully gone away; it can happen because my brain is just like that and is unlikely to change barring a miracle; or it can happen because spiritual skirmishes are a thing.
I write about this because Welcome to Lent. If suddenly things are absurdly more difficult than they should be, it could just be the season.
Nothing to worry about. Turn to Jesus and ask Him to help you enter into the season in the way that He wants, as deeply and as sacrificially as He wants. You’ve done your discerning, you’ve made an honest effort to figure out how your penitential season should be spent, but He’s the omniscient one in the room.
Of all the things you could ask for in prayer, I think this request is one we can be fairly confident the Lord is open to granting.
Image: Holy Card of the Sacred Heart, circa 1880, via Wikimedia (public domain). Approximate translations, from top to bottom: Live Jesus! Behold the heart that so loved men. He is nothing but love and mercy! Come to me all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest . . . Matthew 11:28. “Wherever this image is displayed and honored, it will draw all kinds of blessings.” — Our Lord to Blessed [now Saint] Marg. Marie. Printed by Turgis & Sons, Paris.
