Self Medication

In an effort to self-medicate, I've been retreating to Pride and Prejudice. It's a great favorite--with every person who has an ample supply of estrogen pumping through her body.

But why, you ask, am I self-medicating? I have four children. I homeschool.

No. There is a much more fundamental source for my need: I've been noticing, over the past week, that my mind has whirled considerably. I've felt like I was in a dizzy fog--not able to order my days, temperamental--just rough cut.

In an effort to regain my footing, I've grasped at many things: a hot slice of apple pie with a generous scoop of ice cream, snapping at children who dare cross my path(sorry, my little sweeties), reading blogs until I'm lost in the labyrinth and my eyes are glazed over, indulging in a late bed time just to have silence for an extended stretch. Of course, that didn't work: Sinatra has been taking a hiatus from sleep. Until 10pm on any given night this week he's been a smiling, squirmy, wiggly bubble of joy.

In short, I've been zealously self-indulgent.

I know what is wrong and I know how to fix it. I just haven't wanted to.

On a link from a blog, of a blog, of another blog that I was reading yesterday, some philosopher of this century who got the peace prize (I should be a reporter) was saying that the way to live in peace with your neighbor next door or your neighboring country is to have peace in yourself.

My mind has been flitting from one movie line to the next, from one dessert to the next, from ideas about education, to thoughts of how to build a tree house for the kids from the lumber we get from the back porch when we replace the surface next spring (yea!--I've always wanted a tree house). I've been distracted and nonsensical. None of it has helped. It's only sent me spiraling into more confusion, with my mind juggling more balls than I can count.

But how to focus? I know exactly how to focus. My flesh rebels against it. And since I've been indulging that flesh, it's grown quite loud and has dominated my thinking. Escape is found in one way--always. "You will keep him in perfect peace, whose mind is stayed on You, because he trusts in You," Isaiah 26:3. But I've been trusting in apple pie.

I know that as I indulge in Truth my mind will clear--it will be renewed. As I focus on the Author of peace, all peace will be mine. It never fails. Reading novels and eating pie is easy because it's self-indulgent. Taking a hefty dose of God is like gagging down amoxacillin. It's NOT always easy to take that first dose, but when I do, it works its way through my being and brings my mind and spirit into peace.

Elizabeth Bennett could never do that. She can only separate me from the rest of the world by making me the only person on the earth to use the word nonsensical in my post today.