Who or What Controls You?

By; Jason Marcle

For a few years now, I have struggled with coping with anxiety. I am always looking for anxiety support and resources. Together we all need to bring more attention to mental health awareness. We should all have more empathy in communications with others as none of us know what the next person is going through. People cope with anxiety and depression differently. I hope this mental health blog will help those that are facing similar issues.

I’ve always been the guy that wanted the newest gadgets, the best sounding audio devices, the expensive pocketknives, etc. I am realizing that these things really don’t matter. They are all products of material thinking.  While in this thought process my head is telling me “If you get that expensive OLED TV and that amazing sound package, you will be able to sit down and enjoy movies at home”.  “If you go purchase than nice new vehicle, you will enjoy your long ride to work more”.  I can give many more examples, but I am sure you get the idea.

These material things could even be much smaller and simpler. This is not a good mindset to have.  These material items can play with your emotional intelligence. Many times, I feel like if I have the best of something, people may treat me differently. They may see me a different way. The reality is, when I see people with a $500 – $3k dollar purse, I don’t think highly of them. I question to myself why any human needs a bag that expensive. Now with this example, I am being quick to judge others. Maybe they didn’t purchase that expensive purse, maybe it has sentimental value to that person.  I am saying this to say that sometimes when you think a material item is going to make you look better or make your life easier, it could have the opposite effect.   How can I think an expensive item will bring positive attention to myself if I give negative attention to some with expensive items? Maybe this is some good mental health education for me in my personal mental health journey.

There is no material item that will bring you joy or happiness. It may temporarily give you some satisfaction, but it is short term. When I get in a “self” mindset, I tend to look for happiness in material things. These things accumulate over time and sometimes cause you more stress.  That tablet I bought to read books on updated itself and now it is slow, the battery drains faster. It sits on a desk and collects dust.  That expensive knife I had to have, now sits in a knife case because I spent so much on it, I don’t want to carry it and mess it up.  I call stuff like that shelf queens.  When I am in that mindset, my thinking isn’t logical. My thoughts should be placed on something higher, something much bigger.  It needs to be focused on someone that actually matters. 

Last year, my family and I moved to the country.  We moved into my childhood home after I lost both of my parents.  During the moving process, we realized how many “shelf queens” I actually accumulated as well as how many my parents had accumulated.  This ended up creating more stress for me.  There was more things to pack and move, more things to move out and sell.  The items that I thought would bring me joy, were the items we found stuck away in a drawer, under a bed, or in a closet. Now they were a stressor not only for me, but for my whole household. Not one of those items made my life any better. What did make my life better was the process of purging these items. We moved into a smaller house. We could not bring everything with us. Today I feel more peace when I am watching the birds eat, when I am working in my garden. I am starting to realize that God has provided me so much that I have taken for granted all my life. 

My head likes to play tricks on me. It tells me that all these expensive things will make me happy. It tells me that havening something that someone else wants, will make me popular and cool. It doesn’t tell me that when we die, we can’t take any of it with us. We can’t take our wedding rings, our vehicles, our clothing, our boats, etc. We can’t even take our human bodies. Do you know what we can take?  We can take our faith. We can take the only thing in life that will bring us real happiness. Some people like to call it their “Higher Power”.  I like to call it God. Only God, my higher power, can bring me real happiness.  He can only do that though if I let him.  Step 2 in my recovery program taught me that we “came to believe that a power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity”.  It doesn’t say that you have to have the same higher power than myself, but you need to have you faith somewhere other than material things.

My faith allows me to talk to my Higher Power anytime I want. He listens to me and understands my daily struggles. I struggle more when I try to resolve my own problems.  I struggle more when I try to control the outcomes instead of giving it to God. According the ESV version of the Bible, Proverbs 3:5-6 says “Trust in the Lord with all your heart; and do not lean on your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge him, and he will make straight your paths”. It doesn’t say that I shall direct my paths, It doesn’t say that I need to trust in myself and my own understanding.  I am human, I mess up often. How can I place all faith and control in myself when I can’t seem to do something as simple as drinking a beer without messing up? 

When my father passed away, everything he worked for was still here on Earth.  All of his tools, his knife collection, his vehicle, his clothes, his house, even his wife and son.  He could not take any of that with him. What he did take was his faith. He had comfort knowing that he wasn’t going to need any of these things where he was going.  He is now in a place where there is no pain, no worries, and no sickness. Had he not placed his faith in the right place, he would not have had this comfort.

Matthew 6:19-21 says “Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy and where thieves break in and steal, but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust destroys and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.  

Did you catch that last sentence?  Read it again. When you are looking for happiness in things of this world, you will continue to be disappointed.  I still struggle with this at times.  When I build up my hopes for something and it doesn’t happen the way I thought it would, it disappoints me.  It is like a child building their hopes up to go to a theme park on vacation and Dad changes it to a historical place instead. If we look forward to our eternal home instead of this world, we will never be disappointed.

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