Worry

Philippians 4:6  Don’t worry about anything; instead, pray about everything. Tell God what you need, and thank him for all he has done.  NLT

My morning starts off with a cup of coffee and a look over my calendar to see what I have coming up for the week.  Everything is laid out and I begin to plan exactly where I need to be and when I need to be there.  Then someone “needs” me.  All of a sudden, my life is out of balance.  I am a planner and a scheduler.  And….I am a control freak.

I begin to worry about how I can get everything done, add something to it, and still stay on schedule.  It always works out, but still, I worry.  

That’s just the gentle side of my worry.  Let something happen to one of my family members, especially my parents!  If I am not careful, worry will consume me.  I will wake up at night and not be able to go back to sleep thinking about the problem.  Am I the only one who struggles with this?

I think that it is second nature for women to be fixers.  We like for everything to be in balance.  Sometimes, we simply cannot fix a problem, no matter how hard we worry.  But then, that is part of the problem.  We aren’t supposed to worry.  We are suppose to pray.  

I look back on the time in my life when I struggled to make ends meet.  I was working 3 jobs, taking care of my children, making sure I paid what bills I could.  All I did was worry.  I couldn’t see any way out of my situation.  I “worried in circles”.  I went over the same problems over and over in my mind.  Thankfully, I had my sister to help me learn to “worry in a straight line”.  She taught me that I couldn’t solve everything right now, but I could make a choice of what my next step should be.  Learning that life lesson has been so valuable to me.  Sometimes, we just need to make a plan.  Sometimes, we are so overwhelmed that we cannot see the end of our struggles, but we can see what we should do next.  When we get that next small step accomplished, we can make plans for the next small step.  Before long, we look back and see where we were and thank God because we made it through by making one small step at a time!!

God tells us that we shouldn’t be worriers, but instead we should pray and ask for guidance and wisdom, then thank Him for what He is going to do in our future.  Ok, well, maybe I’m still working on that.  I do have this “circle vs straight line” plan down, though.  Things always work out.  Don’t get so caught up in where you are, that you cannot see where you are going, because you are going places.  You will survive this now time of your life.  Remember to thank Him for His grace.