The Cure for Anxiety

…no good thing will he withhold from them that walk uprightly…Psalm 84:11

I see so many people with anxiety over various things they think they desperately need….a car, a house, a different job, a smart phone, a game system, a drink, a romantic partner.  That desperation is a pathology.  It is not wrong to have goals in life and work toward them.  Some of those goals might very well be acquiring material things or a relationship with someone, but anything that is more important to us than our relationship with God is an idol, and it is wrong…W-R-O-N-G!  That sick attitude causes people to lie, cheat and attempt to manipulate outcomes to gain their purposes.  It causes poor decisions.  We humans never know all the factors with which we are dealing.  We don’t know what will happen tomorrow.  Our decision-making process is crippled by these limitations.

If we love God with all our heart, soul and mind, and we are developing our relationship with him, we don’t need a single thing, and we can rely on Him to plan our future.  He has promised us that if our focus is right, He will see to it that we have every GOOD thing.  That does not mean everything we desire, but it truly does mean everything that is actually good for us.

Those of us who have attempted to live this way can testify that we have wanted some things, NOT gotten them, and then later discovered that we ended up with something far better than what we thought was so important.  Sometimes putting God’s will first has saved us the trouble and sorrow our desire would have caused had we obtained it.

How does one go about convincing someone else of that?

I can share that God has done this in my life, but I know I can’t talk anyone else into it.  This is where faith comes in.  By some miraculous combination of our faith and God’s grace, we step out into life believing that because He made us, He knows what we need and will provide it.  He is God and will keep His promises.  I have been relying on His promises for 65 years, 5 months and 18 days of my 73 years minus 4 days. 

If you, then, though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give good gifts to those who ask him! 

Matthew 7:11

On a Dull Gray Day

The neutral banality of our days,

Lulls us into a monotonous routine.

We fall into habits which become ruts.

Time rolls along with little fluctuation.

We do not live in anticipation.

All unknown to us, change is taking place.

Behind the scenes, with only subtle clues,

Earth-shattering events are being planned.

Giant puzzle pieces are falling into place.

We are oblivious.

Until….

Lightning strikes.

The wall comes down.

The towers fall.

Cancer happens.

A loved one dies.

A volcano erupts.

The dam breaks.

Our world ends…or

The world ends.

The sky rips from east to west.

A trumpet sounds, and He returns to reign.

Unexpected on a routine day,

A gray nothing sort of day is electrified,

And bursts into a full spectrum of radiance.

Will we be caught off-guard….empty-handed?

To Infinity and Beyond

This morning, I was pondering the fact that every child is unique.  My father used to say that the trouble with parenting is that you are always an amateur.  Each child presents unique challenges, as well as times of joy and pride.  As I followed this rabbit trail in my mind, I ended up smiling over the following story.

One night when my son was about six years old, he called out to me shortly after he had gone to bed.

“Mom, would you come and lay down with me for a few minutes?”

As I laid down, I could feel the tension…the agitation…in his body.

He immediately began to talk.  “Now, Mom, I know that a thousand has three zeroes, a million has six, and a billion has nine, but what comes after that?”

“A trillion has twelve,” I replied.

“But, Mom, what comes after that?”

“A quadrillion has fifteen.”

“But, Mom, what comes after that?”

Ah, I thought…this poor child has figured out that no matter how big the number, you can always add another zero.  Numbers go on infinitely, but how could one possibly learn an infinite number of words to describe them?

I said, “Oh, sweetheart, please don’t worry about this.  There is something called the powers of ten that makes this easy.  Ten has one zero, so it is the first power of ten or we can say ‘ten to the first.’  One hundred has two zeroes, so that is ten to the second.  One thousand has three zeroes, so….”

He interrupted me, “And so on?”

“Yes, and so on.”

He sighed with relief, “Oh, thank you!”

I could feel his body relaxing as we lay there side by side.  Within sixty seconds, the deep breathing of sleep began.

I stayed there for a few minutes, smiling up at the ceiling, and thinking about what had just happened.

How does a child that age even think of such a thing?  What other concepts is he exploring?  

Twenty-five years have passed.  The child is now a senior software engineer at a major tech firm.  The project he works on is used by over a billion….yes, that is nine zeroes….people.  Sometimes he talks to me excitedly about what he is currently doing, and I am the one struggling.

“Oh….I wish I understood this well enough to just ask one intelligent question!”

Compared to my mind, his has gone to infinity and beyond.  Isn’t that what we hope for as parents?  That our children will surpass us?  That they will travel new roads….paths we may have never even imagined?

Short Term Pleasure-Long Term Misery

I don’t know his name, but I see him frequently standing on the same corner, and I know why he is there.

He is a maintenance worker for the school district, and no smoking is allowed on school property.  I don’t know how many times a day he does it, but he walks across the street from the maintenance facility and stands out in the cold smoking.  He is slender and past middle age, and he actually looks rather miserable shivering there with his cigarette.

I feel sorry for him.  I don’t know if he defiantly refuses to quit smoking, or if he is too addicted to escape the clutches of nicotine.  I wonder how far he is from emphysema or lung cancer.  As a nurse, I have seen people die of these diseases.  Some of them have insisted that it was not related to cigarettes.  I know of those who have quit smoking and a few years later died of lung cancer, because it was too late.  One of my own uncles always said he could quit any time and would if he ever needed to do so.  He developed lung cancer and did quit, but it was too late to save his life.  I had a neighbor whose COPD was so bad that he could no longer walk from the garage to the house without stopping to lean on the fence and rest, but he thought all those studies linking his condition to cigarettes were falsified.

I have never in my life smoked a single cigarette, but I do not feel self-righteous about this.  The idea of holding and manipulating a cigarette is actually attractive to me.  I grew up around it, and it seems like a perfectly normal thing.  I wish there was a type of cigarette that could be smoked that was beneficial.

I also recognize that I am not free from the risk of lung cancer.  Recent studies show an increased likelihood of lung cancer in those who have been exposed to cigarette smoke while their lungs were developing.  At one point in my life, I lived with five…yes, that is five…smokers who smoked in the house. 

I was born in 1945 and my Dad was in France fighting in World War II.  My mother and I lived with her parents.  When the war ended, it took men some time to find jobs and become reestablished, so we continued to live with my grandparents, as did all three of my mother’s brothers.  My three uncles, my Dad and my Grandfather all smoked. 

For the first 7 years of my life, we moved in and out of my grandparents’ home.  My mother was bedridden during a pregnancy, and we moved back in with them, so Grandma could care for my Mother.  Grandma had some illnesses, and we moved back in, so Mom could take care of her.  We lived with them when we were between homes.  We moved out for good when I was six, and my Dad smoked until about the time of my seventh birthday.  My developing lungs were exposed to a cloud of carcinogens for the first seven years of my life.

All of these smokers in my life professed great love for me, and I don’t doubt that love.  The dangers of smoking were not clearly understood in the 1940s and 50s.  Although they are understood now, many people are trapped.  Some don’t care.  Some shiver in the cold clutching the nail to their own coffin or their child’s.

Cigarettes= short term pleasure and long term misery.