What I’m Doing About Worry

Author

Brianna R Wasson
September 19, 2012

So many times, a worry runs through my mind, and I don’t catch it right off. I don’t recognize it for what it is (i.e. crap), so I start to mull it over and camp there in the anxious.

Like yesterday when I knew it was time for my husband to be driving home. I’d noticed the time and consciously thought to myself, he’ll be home soon. Then I smiled. (Because I like it when my man gets home from work. It’s usually my favorite part of the day.) I sat back down to googletranslate and got back to work trying to understand the letter from school that my daughters had handed me an hour earlier. But a few minutes later, I heard that European siren through the open windows in our apartment (you know, the one that blares nee-naw-nee-naw-nee-naw, etc.), so I stopped and listened (because that’s what I do when I’m in Europe and I hear the cool siren. Because it reminds me that I’m in Europe. Where there are cool sirens. I’m weird like that.) That’s when the cool of the reminding turned into the not-cool of the anxious. Because I realized that my man was on the road, and that someone had called an ambulance. And the two facts scrambled together in my mind to form, well, a bunch of crap that stunk like worry and stress and had me ready to call my friend and figure out how I’d get the girls to school tomorrow when I was sitting in the hospital at my husband’s side in ICU. Seriously, that’s where worry goes when I allow it into my head.

When I heard him turn the key in the door a few minutes later, I ran up to him and told him how glad I was that he was home. Ah, how truly relieved I was that I was hugging him at the door rather than stroking his hand at the hospital. As he settled in, I found myself staring out the kitchen window (because it was time to make dinner, and that’s how I start making dinner. Every night.). And that is when I recognized the crap I had just allowed into my mind. That’s when I remembered what I’ve been learning about God-thoughts and Holy Spirit-powered weapons.

For though we live in the world, we do not wage war as the world does. The weapons we fight with are not the weapons of the world. On the contrary, they have divine power to demolish strongholds. We demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ (2 Corinthians 10:3-5).

You see, most of my life, I have struggled with worry, fear, anxiety of some sort. But the truth is, I truly have nothing to worry about. The truth is, because Jesus Christ is the Lord of my life, His Spirit is alive in me — the Spirit of life, not fear. The Spirit of God. The Bible talks about it all over the place. (Like Psalm 91 and 112 and 16 and Jeremiah 17:7-8 and Philippians 4, just to name a few.) And so, I can stand unshaken. Without fear. Without worry about what will happen. That is the truth.

And it’s the only way to combat the worry that meshes with the sounds of a siren to make crap. The weapon of the truth is the only way to not worry. So I am on a mission to know the truth so well that I recognize the crap before it starts to stink.

Care to join me? Is there crap you need to fight with truth? If so, what’s the truth you can combat it with before it starts to stink?