Are you a "Googler"? Each time one of your children get sick, or you hear about an illness or disease do you immediately whip out your phone and start the search? You scan through symptoms, meanings, and findings hoping to gain an ounce of knowledge. However, too much of the time you end your search being more confused, overwhelmed, and fearful than you were in the beginning. All of a sudden your head is swimming with symptoms that fall into several categories.
"Is my headache a symptom of a common head cold or cancer?"
"Is my sad feeling I have the beginning of clinical depression or am I just having an off day?"
"My child is sniffling and coughing. I think it's allergies, but it could be that new virus that is going around!"
The list goes on and you start to feel fear creeping in. The search that was supposed to lead to answers has now led to doubt, worry, and continual questioning.
The internet can be a wonderful thing. There is truly a lot of good, helpful information to be found, but I have also found that I need to be careful. Once all of these stories, findings, and symptoms have been "revealed" to me they stick. So, for example, the next time one of my littles has a headache my mind too often automatically runs to the worst case scenarios that I read on the internet the week before.
"Above all else, guard your heart, for everything you do flows from it."
Proverbs 4:23
Guard your heart and mind, protect it, not letting evil (fear, doubt, worry) creep in.
So, this is often a struggle of mine. After talking to many moms out there I have found that they struggle with the exact same thing. Themselves, their loved one, or their child gets sick and their mind flashes back to a story they heard or a medical finding they just read. Many moms have a tendency to worry and with that comes the need to fix. So, where do we often turn? The internet. Not always the most reliable source.
As I laid in bed last night, thinking about this, God reminded me of Adam and Eve. In the Garden of Eden God commanded them, "You are free to eat from any tree in the garden; but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat of it you will surely die" (Genesis 2:16-17). However, as Eve encounters Satan or the serpent in the garden, he says, "You will not surely die. For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil" (Genesis 3:4).
I cannot tell you how many times I have wanted to search for something on the internet and I felt the Holy Spirit prompting me to step away. Then, just as quickly, I hear the voice of temptation saying, "Just type it in. You will have all your answers. You can figure it all out on your own." Eve believed the serpent, she wanted knowledge, despite of what God had commanded. Yes, from that moment, her eyes were now opened. Open to fear, awareness of self, doubt, insecurity, and the list goes on...and on.
We have to be so careful with what we allow our eyes to see and ears to hear. I think about children and their innocence. The more they see and hear the more their innocence gets chipped away. Even as an adult, it is the exact same. Our "innocence" becomes non-existent the more we search and expose ourselves to the negative.
As we turn our eyes to the word of God and our voices up in prayer we will begin to truly receive the peace of God that surpasses all "knowledge", for God is the only true knowledge to be had.
