Get Out of Your Head: Stopping the Spiral of Toxic Thoughts

by Jennie Allen

But once we all had settled in, I could tell that I was going to have to change tack. The girls sitting in the circle around me were in no shape to receive the message I’d prepared. They looked deflated and defeated, exasperated and exhausted and confused. Without saying a word, I ran outside the sorority house, pulled a leaf from a nearby tree, ran back inside, and sat down. “Girls,” I said, “I want you to pass this leaf around the circle and really look at it. Look at the ridges, the lines, the veins. Look at the color. Look at the detail. Look at the shape, the contours, the stem.” It was a super cheesy object lesson, I’ll admit, but you know what? That lesson stuck. God had gone to great lengths to craft this individual leaf; hadn’t He applied even greater intention and care to our lives? We weren’t alone. We weren’t accidents. Our situations weren’t hidden from God. Whatever it was that was weighing us down, God would gladly lift from our backs. Think of peacocks, for crying out loud. The colors and detail, so unnecessarily delightful. Who but God would do that? Or the way a symphony swells to something we can barely take in. My countenance and posture lift when I hear it. Or the video of the man playing his upright piano in his living room while surrounded by two feet of standing water left in Hurricane Harvey’s wake.8 Or the patterns of a flower’s petals—three for lilies, five for buttercups, twenty-one for chicory, thirty-four for daisies. That doesn’t just happen,...