Wait to Worry

Tomorrow worries me. I worry about security, acceptance, job performance, and unknown calamity.  I worry about my kids and my granddaughter. I worry about my parents. I worry about getting older and not being valued. I worry about rejection.

Last week I my bride and I spent a couple hours fishing near our home. It was a comfortable early summer evening, and soon my fishing took me twenty yards or so downstream from my wife. My mind was awash in worries about what awaited me at work in the morning. Soon my mind flooded with anxiety about all the "what ifs" that could happen.

Then I looked over at my wife, intent on her fishing. A quiet voice in my head said "worry when it helps". I realized that I almost missed that moment with her, because I was living in the future rather than the present.



So don’t worry at all about having enough food and clothing...your heavenly Father already knows perfectly well that you need them, and he will give them to you if you give him first place in your life and live as he wants you to. So don’t be anxious about tomorrow. God will take care of your tomorrow too. Live one day at a time"

and what’s the use of worrying? What good does it do? Will it add a single day to your life? Of course not!  And if worry can’t even do such little things as that, what’s the use of worrying over bigger things? - Jesus


The teaching is familiar, but I need constant reminders because I often pick up burdens that are not mine to carry. So I am learning to wait to  worry when it can help...and I have yet to find a situation where it does.