Have you seen the movie 27 Dresses? This movie is a biographical sketch of my life that I didn’t authorize Hollywood to share with you all. The latter part of my single years was spent playing paintball, leading Bible studies, and hanging out by the pool with all my single friends. Besides becoming tan, I was also becoming a professional bridesmaid.
While the number of brightly colored satin dresses in my closet neared the dozen mark, the number of dried bouquets of flowers that I kept catching during wedding reception bouquet tosses also increased. I dated what seemed like every bachelor in the city. And Phoenix is a big place. By the time I turned thirty-one, I resigned myself to the fact that I would be seriously single and in youth ministry for the rest of my days.
Every trip I made down the aisle as a bridesmaid made me wonder if something was indeed wrong with me. A pattern started to occur whenever I found myself at the altar beside another beaming bride. And it wasn’t one that matched my smiling and happy exterior. No, my mind was filled with repetitive thoughts that went something like this:
You’re not pretty enough and just not enough for any man in general. If you were enough you’d be married by now.
You’re a prude. Sleep with him or you will lose him. No one has to know.
You’re a ministry leader in the church. You are too independent and intimidating. Submit to a husband? You? Doubtful . . .
You’re in your thirties; how embarrassing to still be single. Your standards are too high.
You need to try harder not to sin so God will bless you with a husband like he is doing for everyone else.
On and on the pattern played in my mind. Reviewing these same sentiments over and over hurt me emotionally and made my stomach ache. I could no longer see anything of worth in myself. With each failed relationship, my sadness grew. My prayerful petitions for a husband slowed. God was clearly not interested in making me a married woman. All those thought patterns produced within me was shame—shame over who I was and who I clearly wasn’t.
Then on one miserable I-am-still-single type of day, a friend phoned to tell me she wanted to set me up with a pilot named Chad Steel. I thought he sounded made up. But we did the long-distance dating thing for several months and I continued to doubt. Me, married? Not going to happen. Ever. And especially to a military man. But Chad loves Jesus and he is “hawt.”1
Chad’s God-given hawtness aside, I watched TV and saw the USAA commercials. Pictures of soldiers coming home from war with their wife standing there waiting and sobbing replayed in my mind. Everyone kept telling me I would be “barefoot and pregnant” and all by myself while my husband would be off in a foreign desert saving the world. I reckoned I could not deal with that. Nope, not going to marry Chad Steel and become a military spouse.
Four months later, Chad proposed to me in front of the Sleeping Beauty Castle at Disneyland. I was so distracted by the fact that Goofy and Donald Duck kept photobombing our pictures and the new, shiny bling on my finger that I forgot to say yes. But I ended up marrying Chad Steel and becoming a military spouse. I became pregnant three months after that and he deployed to a faraway desert to save the world. I waited all those years to get married and then my husband deployed. I laugh about the irony of this now. The day he returned home from overseas I was a crying, very pregnant mess. My life had, in fact, turned into a USAA TV commercial. But we did survive our first year of marriage and I was grateful Chad was there to meet our son minutes after he was born.
I’m now a happily married woman and proud of my husband and of his service to our country. What surprises me though is the fact that negative thought patterns similar to the ones that occurred during my single years still surface in my mind. Marrying a wonderful man did not erase my shame. Now my negative thought patterns sound more like this:
Well, you are not getting any younger, and your body no longer looks like it did on your wedding day. You better work out more and use antiwrinkle cream so your husband will still love you.
You are always tired and distracted. Maintain physical intimacy more often with your husband, or you will give him cause to stray if you do not satisfy him.
You need to try harder not to sin so God will bless you with a perfect marriage just like he is doing for everyone else.
Here is what I am learning. Wearing a rock on my left hand has not erased my shame. Calling upon the Rock who created my hands eases it instead.
Seasons of our life change, but the thought patterns that produce negative feelings may not change because we allow them to continue. Negative thought patterns criticize, critique, and crumple the hearts of the single, married, divorced, and widowed alike. Is there a negative thought pattern or behavior in your own life that is coming to mind as you read this right now? Then I pray you will allow God to help you stop it and to let go of it. We must replace a negative pattern with a positive pattern that takes our focus off ourselves and places our focus back on to God.
Oh, and I also have another theory as to why I ended up married to Chad Steel. When I was a little girl, I told my mom I was going to marry my cartoon character crush, Mighty Mouse, because he would fly around and save all the girl mice who were in trouble. Well . . . my husband really does fly around and save people in one sense. See? God did fulfill the desire of my little-girl heart by bringing me a mighty 6′1″ man. God really is fun. How I love him for this.
Faith That Catches the Attention of Jesus
I really wish the Gospel accounts in the New Testament were longer. As I reflect on what I do know about Jesus’s life, I chuckle as I think about him putting the Pharisees in their place. I’m challenged by many of his parables and by his Sermon on the Mount. And I am often moved by the miraculous ways Jesus healed the lame and the sick. It didn’t matter their disability, age, gender, or social status, Jesus healed them. One particular woman on the receiving end of such an encounter has become a personal hero of mine.
The Gospel of Mark tells us that after Jesus healed a demon-possessed man in Gerasenes, he was summoned to the house of Jairus, who was a leader in the synagogue. Jairus’s daughter was ill, so he asked Jesus to come and heal her. On the way there, a woman who had been bleeding for twelve years reached out and touched Jesus’s garment, and in doing so, she was healed immediately.
As you are about to see, this woman’s touch stopped the Son of God in his tracks. The Jewish VIP Jesus was on the way to help had to wait a little longer, because someone who has a whole lot of courage and faith is also a VIP in Jesus’s eyes. This woman was no leader in the community, and yet Jesus made time for her. I wish we were told her name or more information about her life before she fell ill. I also wonder if she had any specific thought patterns repeating in her head as a result of the continuation of her chronic illness. Maybe her thoughts went something like this:
Will I ever be well again? What did I do to deserve this? Why me?
My money is gone; how will I survive?
Why have I suffered so much under the care of countless doctors? Why can’t they help me?
Could what I am hearing about Jesus of Nazareth be true? Can Jesus heal me? If he does heal me, my life will be so different!
What we do know is that this woman suffered from a chronic illness that caused her to bleed for twelve years. She fell into a pattern of seeing doctor after doctor, believing they would be able to help her, but none of their care worked. In fact, the woman grew worse and, by the time we meet her in Scripture, had spent all of her money in repeated efforts to be cured. But then the woman heard about Jesus. In the end, she was healed. And her faith stopped Jesus in his tracks.
When she heard about Jesus, she came up behind him in the crowd and touched his cloak, because she thought, “If I just touch his clothes, I will be healed.” Immediately her bleeding stopped and she felt in her body that she was freed from her suffering.
At once Jesus realized that power had gone out from him. He turned around in the crowd and asked, “Who touched my clothes?” . . .
Then the woman, knowing what had happened to her, came and fell at his feet and, trembling with fear, told him the whole truth. He said to her, “Daughter, your faith has healed you. Go in peace and be freed from your suffering.” (Mark 5:27–30, 33–34)
While we may not know the exact pattern of thoughts that replayed in this woman’s mind, we do know she was desperate to be healed. Maybe her negative or shameful thought patterns started to slow and were replaced with hopeful and more positive ones that focused on Jesus. Which, in turn, motivated her to go and see him.
And so here we find her risking ridicule and placing herself smack-dab in the middle of the crowd because this is where Jesus was, and because she was desperate to meet him. I love that it was Jesus who wound up looking for her since her faith touched him in ways we cannot understand or comprehend. I wish Scripture told us how this woman lived out the rest of her redesigned life. I bet you she wasn’t excluded anymore, but included instead. She was no longer unclean but healed. Kind of like the other unnamed woman who came to the dinner party and washed the feet of Jesus with her tears, the one we looked at in chapter 2. Hmm . . . I see a pattern here, don’t you?
In the same way, Jesus, along with God the Father and the Holy Spirit, notices every single touch of desperation we extend his way. It doesn’t matter how much the Holy Trinity has on their proverbial plate, or if someone who the world deems to be a VIP needs their help at the same time we do. God makes time for you. Jesus knows your desperation. The Holy Spirit can ease your conscience or heal your body, whether or not you ask for him to do so. But in this particular passage, Jairus had to ask Jesus to come. The woman had to risk and touch Jesus.
Are you desperate for God? Will you ask or risk in order to be close to your Healer? Or are you looking to your own version of a cartoon Mighty Mouse instead of your Mighty Savior to rescue you while nursing a negative thought or behavioral pattern? This is vital for you to realize, because this is a fact: life will not go as we planned for it to go.
Seasons full of pain and disappointment are prime times for negative patterns to take root and grow. So watch for them.
I also know that some of you are like this woman and suffer from a chronic illness. There are precious ones close to me who do, and it breaks my heart to hear of their ongoing pain. I don’t know why doctors are unable to help them or why their suffering continues. I wish they could reach out and literally touch the robe of Jesus like this woman from Scripture was able to do. But I know that their Mighty Savior is moved by their faith and is using their story to touch the lives of those of us who are privileged enough to know them. Their faith and ability to endure and achieve much in their lives is beautiful and inspiring. They are courageous warriors in their own beautiful, couture way and are deserving of our prayers and respect.
But for others of us, we have not asked Jesus to come and heal us. It could be that our suffering has gone on for way too long because we are stuck in a pattern of thinking or behaving that does not align with the directions our heavenly ATC has given us. We are just circling aimlessly, unable to land at the destination God desires for us. Whenever we see a pattern, we better pray and pay attention to whether it is true and helpful or false and hurtful.
Patterns Are Powerful
We are created to bless the world around us in a myriad of ways. Negative patterns prevent us from doing so. So we shouldn’t ignore or blow past them, but pray through and release them into the capable, healing hands of God.
I don’t pretend to know what you may be dealing with. I believe some of us need to seek professional and medical help to enable us to heal and break free from certain negative patterns. God heals through medicine and uses professional services all the time. And should you, as a Christian, choose to use these wonderful resources, it doesn’t mean you have less faith than your pastor or that you are a failure in the eyes of God. But also consider studying and knowing the patterns of the Bible to help you heal and overcome as well. God has taken the time to communicate them to you and me for a reason.
The more you study God’s Word, the more patterns you will find to help you overcome the negative ones in your life. For example, to replace a pattern of dishonesty with a pattern of honesty, check out verses such as Exodus 20:16; Proverbs 12:22; and Colossians 3:9. To replace a pattern of impatience with a pattern of patience, check out verses such as Romans 12:12; Colossians 3:12; and Ephesians 4:2. Or to replace a pattern of anger with a pattern of love, check out verses such as Proverbs 3:3–4; 1 Corinthians 13:4–5; and 1 Peter 4:8. I encourage you to keep a journal full of the patterns you find in Scripture so that you can refer to them often when life surprises or shocks you. They are there, if we only slow ourselves down enough to see them.
I love how my friend Gretchen is slowing herself down and releasing control to God. By doing so, Gretchen has discovered the peace of God and is resting in new patterns of faithfulness, perseverance, and gratitude. She says:
When life was seemingly under my control, I felt at peace. Consequently, as life grew wild and chaotic as the sea, this became my undoing. I had spent most of my adult life trying to control the patterns of those around me in order to enjoy a peaceful existence. In the midst of a life I may not have designed, I learned that peace is not found in controlling the patterns of others but rather through allowing God to redesign the patterns in me. He taught me how to respond wisely when my security felt threatened. Faithfulness, perseverance, and gratitude became my default pattern. This allowed me to experience contentment no matter how unpredictable life became. I may not be able to design the picture-perfect life of my choosing but I can still find the peace that surpasses all understanding. Come to find out, that’s even better.
~Gretchen Fleming
I agree with Gretchen: God’s peace is better. And when life doesn’t go as planned, we are in need of it the most. I trust you agree and that you’ll take a moment to pause and ask God to fill you with his peace that really does surpass our understanding.
How to Check for and Replace Negative Patterns in Your Life
How can we know if we are circling about in a negative pattern? Begin with these suggestions:
Finally, brothers and sisters, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable—if anything is excellent or praiseworthy—think about such things.
If the belief is not true, it goes. Let it go and move your thoughts on to something else. The same applies if your thinking isn’t pure or lovely or any of the other things mentioned in this verse. When I am in a season where I am really struggling with my thoughts, I write this verse on a note card and keep the card with me. Then when the unhealthy pattern starts happening, I start filtering the negative thought through this verse. Over time, the pattern and perspective regarding myself, the situation, or the other person changes and I am quicker to think whatever is positive, true, or right regarding myself or the situation.
Stick to the Pattern
I hope the design principle of pattern reinforces the truth that God is not a distant and uncaring God. He most certainly cares and is present, desiring to communicate with you and me so we can know more about who he is and about how we can live a life of peace, freedom, and blessing. No matter what state your human affairs are in, you have a God who is everlasting, forgiving, and who rejoices over you. He sees you and loves you.
Consider if there’s a pattern about God that you need to hang in a prominent place in your heart. I also pray you will take some time to see if there are patterns that are circling within you. Will you allow God to speak to you through them? Once you hear him, all you have to do is turn to the right or to the left and stick to the pattern.
And don’t be surprised if you brush up against someone who is hard to love or who is opposite of you while circling in the pattern. Sometimes we think we’re seeing things clearly, when in fact, we’re not. Hence our need for the next principle of contrast—and for some new spiritual glasses.