Book Review by Major Lawry Smith
Helena, MT Corps – Northwest Division
I find the book, Get Out of Your Head, by Jennie Allen incredibly relevant in these uncertain days as many of us find ourselves battling anxiety, perhaps even questioning truth and faith. Thoughts such as “am I good enough, worthy, or loved” can consume us. Fear over our health, families, jobs, and finances overwhelm us. We allow our minds to spiral and adopt patterns that keep us stuck; Allen encourages us with a better way.
Allen describes her own “spiral of darkness.” After an unexpected encounter with a woman at one of her speaking engagements she found herself entertaining thoughts of fear and doubt and even questioned the validity of God and faith. I believe many of us can relate to her experience.
The words of a friend, “this isn’t who you are,” allowed Allen to realize that her toxic thoughts were an attack of the enemy and it was time to fight back. But how? How are we to combat these ceaseless thoughts of stress and worry? Allen reminds us that we do so when we “take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ” (2 Corinthians 10:5). She further states, “What if one thought held the power to interrupt our spirals and bring peace to chaos?”
Allen outlines a strategy to help us find such peace. For every lie there is a truth and based on that truth we make a choice, which can change the trajectory of our spiraling thoughts. In other words, we must retrain the way we think and live and we do so when we are “wholly consumed with the mind of Christ.”
I highly recommend this book to anyone who wants to change their unhealthy thought patterns. Get Out of Your Head provides the tools to stop the spiral of toxic thinking.
