Mind over matter

The last two weeks of class have had me thinking. A lot.
We have a bunch of different classes. We have our main session class, which all of the first year students attend, optional classes we sign up for, optional projects we sign up for, meetings with our RG, a group of about 70, and meetings with our small group (four of us) or core group (20 of us). Then we have homework, sometimes short answer questions, sometimes mini book reports, sometimes self assessments. It is crazy to me, and no coincidence, how even though I am the only person here with my distinct combination of classes and homework experiences, so often the message I'm getting, the 'thing' I'm working on, is consistently addressed throughout. Lately, it's been mindsets.

One of the speakers we had last week said something that's stuck with me, "Any area of your life that isn't glistening with hope shows you're believing a lie." Wow. There are a lot of lies I have been believing for a really long time about myself, about who I am, what I can do, who my Father is, what he can do. I didn't even know they were there. There is a verse (Matt 7:18) where Jesus talks about how good trees produce good fruit and bad trees bad fruit. It's so easy to put all your energy into plucking the bad fruit off before anyone sees it instead of addressing the tree that keeps producing it. The neurological connections in our brains actually grow like trees, the more times we think about something, the bigger the tree system becomes. Yet our minds are wired to look for evidence that reinforces our belief systems. 

Someone said recently, a parent doesn't look at a toddler learning to walk when they fall over and say, "See, there's proof that you're not designed to walk! You're meant to crawl for the rest of your life!" Yet we treat ourselves that way, like truth is based on what we see and how we feel currently instead of on who we were designed to be.

All of a sudden I find myself actually believing these things. My hope-ometer is reading higher than it has for a very long while and I'm starting to recognise doubt and lies before they get a chance to establish roots in my brain. I don't want to settle for mediocre survival - I'm not designed for it, none of us are. I want to live well, love well, be significant, give others space to be significant.