choose your battles

resisting our default by taking thoughts captive

I am rarely the one who makes dinner here anymore, but if I am left to my own devices I will act on default and cook potatoes. Mashed potatoes, fried potatoes, baked potatoes, hash browns, doesn’t matter. This is my factory setting, my life always needs more potatoes and gravy.

So last week when I just had a few kids to cook for – an oddly rare thing that has somehow become more and more common this year – I started rinsing and peeling potatoes. Then I cut them in thick, crispy slices and set them in a little olive oil to fry. Grabbed an onion and shaved it thin to caramelize, threw it on top of the potatoes. Perfect.

When it was ready, I flipped and stirred them and waited a couple more minutes. You need a good steel spatula for this to separate the golden starch of the food from the searing heat of the cast iron, and after a few more minutes I slid it under and flipped again. But in my enthusiasm, a large chunk of onion-laden potatoes sailed out of the pan and landed next to the adjacent burner…which was on, under the pot of tea I was making for kombucha.

And the stove top was perfectly clean.

Um. Are you thinking what I was thinking?

If you are, then you know that I briefly wondered if I could just leave them there to finish cooking, or if I needed to fish them all out with a fork.

Because sometimes putting off hard things and taking the easier route is also my default.

(Yes, I fished them out; crispy golden perfection is worth it.)

But I’m not alone in this; my children have it too.

“Mom, how do you spell ‘uniform?’” Finn asked from across the room, writing in his journal.

“You mean, like a police officer’s uniform?” I clarified, in case I misheard what he said.

“No, like a space uniform.” Right, those are totally different, except for their spelling.

“Same thing,” I said. “U…N…I…” I waited, giving him time to write them.

A long pause followed. Finally I asked, “Did you write U-N-I?”

He looked up at me. “I think I’ll just say ‘suit.’”

Yep, choose your battles. One syllable is much shorter than three syllables. That’s my boy.

Laziness is our factory setting and it’s fine for some things. We must choose our battles; life has enough complications without idolizing perfectionism and picking the hardest route every single time.

Except when it comes to our thoughts. When we are overwhelmed with stress, we must choose the bold route and refuse to give in to passivity, because putting off the hard thing will come back to bite us every time. Our minds naturally run like water downstream, sending our thoughts toward what the enemy wants us to focus on, unless we train them otherwise.

For example, I ran through my mental to-do list today: Pick up the kid from camp, do school with the other kids, meet the deadline, answer the emails, respond to the text, listen to the recording, help the kid with math, find school books from a non-woke company, and make two kinds of salad for dinner with friends. The overwhelm built up and my heart started pounding, and I caught myself taking slow, deep breaths to get enough oxygen. And why do I feel like crying again? I thought.

Because I’m thinking downhill. This is too much, too hard, I don’t know how to do this all at the same time, there’s never enough time. I’m not doing enough and I don’t know how to do more. This person is so frustrating, I’m so annoyed. Why did he say it that way, and what is he implying?

Just as we mindlessly scroll social media unless we deliberately choose to grab a book or do something else productive, we will slip quietly toward the path of least resistance unless we do something about it. We must choose the thoughts to cling to, and direct our minds in the right direction.

If we don’t, they sink like the gravitational law of purses and handbags: Phones and keys – like our undisciplined thoughts – plummet to the bottom within three seconds of entering the bag, but feminine hygiene products (our worries) are so buoyant they stick out at the top and wave at everyone who passes by. Hello, look at me! Throwing a wrench into your day in three, two, one…yes! Mortification, complete!

Our default is to let the enemy run wild in our thoughts. Undisciplined, we tend to give him free reign to abuse our imagination, allowing it to think the worst of others, the worst of ourselves, and of the worst case scenarios – and that is like praying for what we don’t want to happen. This is how the enemy sends us spiraling into our mental padded room, surrounded by empty bottles and chocolate wrappers. But it’s not where we’re meant to be.

So we have to be strong and aware, and use our imaginations in a holy way. When we think of the best case scenarios and what they look like, we’re not participating in some New Age visualization; we’re agreeing with God’s goodness for the situation, the people, and ourselves, and asking Him to help us see what He sees. It becomes prayer and it is powerful.

But worrying is also powerful. So we must choose the kind of powerful we want to be.

Years ago, one of my kids asked, “Why are grown-ups able to make better choices than kids? Because you know you’re supposed to drink water, so you drink it. But I know I’m supposed to drink water, and I don’t, because I don’t want to.”

What she didn’t realize is that I finally learned to drink water after losing my gall bladder in emergency surgery after yeeeears of not drinking enough of it. Sometimes we have to learn the hard way. And this is true of taking our thoughts captive, too.

Maturity and holiness come from learning to do what you have to, not just want you want to. Grown-ups have had more time to practice – though not all of them have chosen that battle, which is why you get middle-aged narcissists who cry about being a victim anytime they’re held accountable for their actions.

We destroy arguments and every lofty opinion raised against the knowledge of God, and take every thought captive to obey Christ.

– 2 Corinthians 10:5

On those overwhelming days (this is me, preaching to myself) we must choose the topic of our thoughts and not run with whatever flies into our mind first. This is a habit of the will. We choose preemptive peace in our minds by forgiving others and ourselves, and dealing with wounds so we stop the cycle of wounded people who wound other people.

We choose it. We decide where to let our thoughts dwell. So when the enemy lays out the trap, we deliberately set our mind on something else to actively resist him, and we walk our thoughts elsewhere. We tell them where to go. We must not take the bait.

Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things.

– Philippians 4:8

These are busy days for our family (and probably for yours, too) and we have a rule about clocking out at six, but there’s still something to be said for evening writing: sitting on the bed or the couch or at the table, pounding away at the open laptop after the kids are in bed. We’ve been doing that a lot lately and it’s like going back to my roots, when I did most of my writing between 9pm and 2am.

It’s not what I’d prefer, though. I would probably rather be reading, or watching goofy videos on the internet with Vince. But this is the season for doing deliberate things, often hard things, and for running faster than we’d like to.

This is not the season for laziness or taking the easy route.

In those years of late night writing when Finn was a toddler, sometimes I would let the girls stay up to keep him occupied while I worked on a piece with eight tabs open and a couple of books next to me. They often played Restaurant, with Cham and Finn on the floor with a receiving blanket as a tablecloth, and Iree handing out menus. You want toast, right? Yes, and two rolls with butter on them. We happen to be out of rolls, would you like biscuits instead? Yes, with honey. Oh, Finn, no! The ambitious little man had escaped the table and shown terrible etiquette by tearing up the kitchen supplies.

So he has not always been one to take the easy, passive route, and this is still the case. And to be fair to myself – as I hope you are being fair to yourself – we have not always taken the easy route, either. We were made in the image of the One who tackled creating the entire world we know in only six days, and He’s designed us to look and act like Him. We were made to do big things, to commit exploits. Our minds have to be disciplined first, though, because the enemy will henpeck anyone who’s an easy target.

If then you have been raised with Christ, seek the things that are above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. Set your minds on things that are above, not on things that are on earth.

– Colossians 3:1-2

That visionary boy who chooses his battles has a birthday coming up, and we, too, are getting to choose our battles because this is his wish list: an invisible flame thrower, a double bladed lightsaber, a dirt bike, a digital watch, and a jetpack. Good gravy.

But a couple days ago he made a concession.

“I decided to take the invisible flame thrower off my birthday list,” he said.

“Really?” I replied, trying to hide my relief as the heavens opened and the angels sang the Hallelujah Chorus.

“Yeah.” He cocked his head and showed me a diagram he’d drawn. “I think I can just make it myself.”

Record scratch. Made for exploits, I reminded myself.

But maybe you can roast potatoes with it, at least.