My mind runs wild with me. Help!

Have you ever felt like your mind was telling you where to go, and not the other way around? 

Enter mindfulness practice. 

You may have heard it called meditation. Ok, wait! I understand, you may have some baggage that comes along with that, but hear me out. 

Consider that your mind is a muscle. Just like muscles of your body, the mind has incredible capacity for strength, but it needs to be trained. Without training, it devolves into weakness and kind of ends up wherever it ends up - in bad patterns or injury. 

Mindfulness (or meditation) is an exercise that trains the mind. Some people think that meditation just means clearing your mind. This is incorrect. If you're a believer in Christ, you may be familiar with the parable in Matthew 12, where a person cleans their house of an unclean spirit, but leaves it empty, and seven more unclean spirits return. The concept is similar. We do not want blank, idle minds. We want minds filled with things of goodness, things that edify, things that spur us on to good works and endurance during this life. 

In the most basic mindfulness practice, I want you to set a 60 second timer on your phone and begin slowing your breath. I want you to focus your mind only on that breath. In... out... in... out.... When your mind wanders (which it will), and you notice it (you may or may not), gently and without judgment, return your attention to your breath. That is one rep, one curl of the dumbbell. You have successfully, in that moment, told your mind where to go. Depending on how unruly your mind is in the moment, this could be difficult. The goal is not violently ripping your mind from whatever it wanders to, but firmly and kindly laying aside whatever comes up, knowing you can return to it later, and returning to your breath. 

You see how this exercise can be helpful. If you find yourself wracked with anxiety, what power there is in being able to return to the present moment, to your breath, which is ever with you and ever a reminder of God's faithfulness. 

There are many other examples of mindfulness and meditation. In the early church, prayer and meditation on the Word went hand-in-hand. Some forms of meditation involve activation of the imagination in a way that allows us to process through emotion and still ourselves to hear from the Holy Spirit.

I recorded a meditation guide based on Luke 3, inspired by the book Anatomy of the Soul by Dr. Curt Thompson. It's short, about 3.5 minutes long. Take a listen, and I hope it is helpful to you.