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I come from a long line of worriers. But I have found that anxiety is a manageable animal. With proper care, you can set your pet worries free!
My mom watched 20/20 and worried that the crib slats on my baby's bed were the kind that strangled children. (That was in 1980.) She also saw that nitric oxide could kill children, and asked me to check with her before I took Julie to the dentist. (The child wouldn't have teeth for months yet!)
Daddy worried about the tent worms. He heard that they had decimated the forests in North Carolina and were steadily making their way toward Pennsylvania. Not that Daddy was in the logging business; cancer killed him long before tent worms killed too many PA trees. Maybe worrying about worms kept his mind off of the cancer.
Anyway, I grew up feeling that worrying was my responsibility. All thinking, caring people worried, I thought.
Then I read the words of Jesus in Matthew chapter 6:
25"Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more important than food, and the body more important than clothes? 26Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they?
Wow! After life, what else is there to obsess about? In fact, I found out that if I listed my most consuming worries, they were trivial. If a thing is worth concern, I take it to the Lord. Of course, God surely wants us to care about the important things in life. But worry....worry is the useless fretting and fussing that leads to inappropriate or untimely action....or inaction resulting from fear of making mistakes. Worry gets in the way of living happily every after.
Some items are so small that I laugh just from writing them on paper. Others are big, and are worth carrying to the Father's throne. I have worried:
Whether fossil fuels would hold out long enough for me to own a car.
That the Lord might return before I got to marry
About the lack of jobs in Pennsylvania
About the lack of marriageable bachelors in Pennsylvania
Whether that cute guy from TX would ever write to me
How I would feel living far from my Mom
That we might get pregnant too soon
That we might not be able to get pregnant at all
That drinking tea might hurt my unborn baby
That Mom might be right about the crib slats and that Little Debbie cookies were and root of all evil
That I might not have a clean enough house when people came to visit
That I wouldn't get a job
That I would get a job that I didn't like
About the amount of chocolate I ate
I am happy to report that chocolate is now good for us, tea and even coffee contain antioxidants. The rest of my list ended up brighter than I imagined. Besides being a worrier, I have also learned to be a pray-er and a do-er. I set goals. I cope. I trust God. And things turn out okay. Or when they don't, God gives me strength.
I dare you--make a list. What are all the things you worry about? Which are silly? Cross them off the list! Which deserve to be prayed over? Enter them into your prayer journal. Keep a dated log of the moment that God answers those prayers. Which items call for actions that you can take, such as starting college, planning a budget, or embarking on a weight-loss plan? Make a plan. Do some research. Don't waste time allowing your mind to run in tired circles like a dog on a chain. Turn it free!
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