I’ve had a lot of worries in my life, most of which never happened. – Mark Twain

Mark Twain’s words are definitely worth a moment to ponder. How many of your worries have ever actually become reality? It isn’t as if we can change ANYTHING by fretting about it. Maybe you are like me and you think if you resolve every possible outcome before it happens then you will be prepared when everything goes all wrong. I won’t remind you – or me – that this is basically impossible. God didn’t put us here to spend our lives worrying about what might be. He expects us to turn to him and to trust him through the storm. Honestly, he tells us to rejoice!

James 1:2-4 Consider it pure joy, my brothers and sisters, whenever you face trials of many kinds, ³ because you know that the testing of your faith produces perseverance. ⁴ Let perseverance finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything.

Ugh! I don’t typically find pure joy during trials. How about you? What has helped me is TRUSTING God beyond what I understand and knowing that God is strengthening me through the difficulties. James 1:4 says persevere so that we will be mature and complete, NOT LACKING ANYTHING. It is hard to even fathom not lacking for anything, but it is worth pushing forward even when every step feels like your feet are buried in concrete. God is with us.

There is so much to cause anxiety these days that it would be “normal” to worry a bit. I am confident I don’t even need to give you a list of examples because they are already running through your head. If you weren’t prone to worrying before, then the world is defintely helping us create an environment for it now! The world has gone a bit looney! God will use circumstances for good and he has proven this to me over and over again and yet I still struggle to hold onto that truth. 

Romans 8:28 And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose.     

Often I feel like we behave like the Israelites who have been provided for over and over again and shown God’s power and they still stray back into sinful behavior. Time and time again God provides and gives us strength, but yet we worry if God is really going to pull through for us this time.

I have started praying that I will have the STRENGTH TO ENDURE the lessons before me; that is what I see as the bigger challenge. The year of 2016 taught me this like no other. In May, I caught my only employee doing heroin. In July, my mom had a stroke that permanently destroyed her ability to reason or speak clearly. That summer after many tests, my daughter was diagnosed with a severe intestinal disorder. In the fall, the County came after my business for permitting issues. The day after Thanksgiving, I was in an accident where a hit-n-run driver totalled my van and caused me painful injuries that I spent months in therapy for. By the end of that year to say I was angry would be an understatement.

Primarily though I was disappointed in myself. I didn’t feel strong enough to endure the trials that God was trying to teach me something through. I was so emotionally broken. Slowly God showed me how those trials would reveal blessings and strength, some of them are still a work in progress. However, what I learned was that I need to trust God in the middle of the hurricane. I can cry out to God, yell at him and be angry with him and he is fully capable of handling my frustrations.

The part I hate about it is looking back at my behavior and my frustrations with God because I didn’t trust that ANYTHING good could possibly come out of these terrible trials. This was the season that I really learned to appreciate the story of Joseph. I’m embarrassed to say that now that one of the contributing factors to me trusting God in the present is that I don’t want to look back at myself and see how distrusting I was through the storm like I was in that season. Even if I am emotionally battered I want to be able to look back and know that I was diligently praying, trusting, and believing God’s goodness through the storm – no matter how bleak it looks.

Don’t get me wrong I have spent a lot of my life being the QUEEN of worrying! I was raised by parents that taught me how to worry and continue to do so. My mom can barely speak clearly now, but the last thing she says to me each time I leave her is “Be careful”; not “I love you”, not “Have a good day”, but “Be careful”. It is such a testiment to the level of worry that I was raised in. I used to tell people that I had earned a PhD in worrying!!! It is a hard habit to break, but it can be done.

Retrain your brain to trust God. One of the ways I did this was to pray each time I began to worry. I give no time to worry, my time is only spent in prayer. I pray for strength to endure. I pray for wisdom and a need not to lean on my own understanding. If the worry returns then I begin praying again. I pray Romans 8:28 until I believe it again.    

Matthew 6:25-34 “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 than food, and the body more than clothes? ²⁶ Look 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? ²⁷ Can any one of you by worrying add a single hour to your life?

²⁸ “And why do you worry about clothes? See how the flowers of the field grow. They do not labor or spin. ²⁹ Yet I tell you that not even Solomon in all his splendor was dressed like one of these. ³⁰ If that is how God clothes the grass of the field, which is here today and tomorrow is thrown into the fire, will he not much more clothe you—you of little faith? ³¹ So do not worry, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’ ³² For the pagans run after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them. ³³ But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well. ³⁴ Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own.