Monday, May 26, 2008

Peace, OCD, and Monday

It's Monday morning and I'm still thinking about peace. Yesterday's lesson on The Peace of Jesus seemed to touch a chord in a lot of folks - at least their comments afterwards would indicate that. And I still find myself thinking about how hard it is to truly have peace, primarily because we are so controlled by our fears. Did you realize that nearly all fears are learned? Parents pass on their fears to their children, friends pass on their fears to friends, and the TV News give us several new fears to have every day. I watched part of a recorded Oprah show last week that was about some folks with OCD being forced to confront their fears at an OCD camp. Most of them had a severe and debilitating fear of germs. Germs? Dr. Oz pointed out that we have zillions of bacteria in our stomach all the time. The body needs it, and we ALL are terribly inconsistent in our fight to avoid, kill, and remove any germs in our life. Everything we touch has germs on it! And what about the fact that we've only known about germs for a tiny part of history. It wasn't many decades ago that no one knew what a germ was. I wonder what OCD people did before they were told about germs? The thing that was so obvious - and painful to see - was how their happiness, their chance at peace, was completely robbed by fear.
Here's what I think. Our fears are only the obvious sign of our lack of thankfulness. When we focus on what we have to be thankful about, we haven't got time to be obsessed with what might go wrong. When we are thankful for what we have, we won't be so fearful of what we might lose. Every fear we have deflates the quality of our life. Trust God - He tells us to be thankful in all things. Discover the peace that comes from seeing everything as a gift to enjoy - a gift that can't last forever, and a gift that must be given away.
Donna and I watched Mr. Magorium's Wonder Emporium Saturday evening. Cute, fun, and a different kind of movie, but worth seeing because of its message about life. I totally loved the comment made by Mr. Magorium, played by Dustin Hoffman, when he said, "Life is an occasion, rise to it." Peace elevates life, while fear lowers it.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Mental disorders are due to the lack of chemical(s) imbalance which resides in the brain and effects the bodies function. Sometimes it takes intensive retraining while other times it might take medication to help rectify the imbalance. And, to make matters even more complicated, there are varying levels of this disorder.

The human body is a wonderfully complex mechanism. Fear is also wonderfully complex itself. So to understand and comprehend fear one must be able to discern between truth and fiction. Fact or media fan fair.

Someone whom has OCD may not necessarily fixate on germs specifically it’s the fact they have to fixate on something is what is disturbing to most. Due to the chemical imbalance, these individuals feel like they have to do something repeatedly. It’s not fear, for most, it’s the feeling of need which drives them into doing something which looks odd to most.

I did not get a chance to see this episode; however, I believe we, me included, should be careful of using the label “fear” for something we don’t understand or wish to label simply because of an incomplete illustration used by the media.

Fear is not bad. Fear should lead us to question. Questions can lead us to answers. Those answers can lead to peace if applied correctly.

Are we not to fear God?