Article March 9, 2015 Issue

When I said no to scary thoughts …

Zachary, seventh grade, New York

One recent winter I had many half days of school because of snow in our area. I was very excited for the weekend, too, because I had finished all of my homework and was looking forward to expressing joy in all of my weekend activities.

On a break from playing in the snow, I began reading a fiction book. The book was not a good choice because it talked about disease and said things about the sun that made me afraid. I like to be outside and began to think, “Maybe I have the illness the one character’s friend has.” I kept on reading. Suddenly, I snapped “awake.” Why was I thinking these terrible thoughts?

Sometimes things we read and see on TV and online put these little thoughts about disease into our heads. But I’ve learned we can immediately exterminate bad thoughts by listening to good thoughts from God. The illness in the book was not even real. It was imaginary. I started to think about how every sickness and ungodlike quality is not real because God did not make it. So even though sickness may seem to lurk behind us, we don’t need to be afraid. We can correct our thinking, throwing bad thoughts “out the window,” exterminating them, so they won’t bother us again.

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