Weary With Worry
Sometimes, the everyday act of living a human life is exhausting. Simple tasks feel burdensome. Connecting with people is as hard as scaling a mountain. Our souls, spirits, and minds are stretched thin, wrung of all energy and capacity, weighted with invisible but ever-painful shackles. Sometimes they are invisible to us too.
This has described how I have felt this week. There was no specific tragic or stressful moment that caused the feeling of heaviness, just a lot of small things building and clinging like parasitic barnacles. They hide in the crevices, out of sight, until they have sapped away all strength and can’t be easily scraped off.
I don’t know about you, but I think the “barnacle” that tends to cling most strongly to my heart is worry. Worry over the agenda for the day, worry over something at work, worry over the unknown of my future, worry over how little time I have to get things done, worry over how little time I have to spend with loved ones; worry, worry, worry…
I know worrying about things I cannot control is useless. Worse, it’s actually wasteful. I heard a quote from Chuck Missler, one of my favorite Bible expositors, recently, and pinned it to the noteboard above my writing desk: “Worry is assuming responsibility God did not intend.” I see this quote nearly every morning when I sit down to read my Bible or journal, but the words haven’t really sunk in, it seems. The proof of it is in my life right now, seen in the exhausted state of my heart.
I think worry is worse than just taking on what we were not created to carry: it is blatant distrust in God. When I worry, it’s as if I’m telling God, “Hey now, I know You created the universe and all, and have done countless miraculous things in my life to prove Your love and faithfulness to me, but you know, I don’t really think you can handle this one. I think I’ll take care of it myself.”
Ouch. If there was ever a biting insult to God’s soverignty and majesty, that would be it. Imagine hearing that from the beloved child you fashioned and planned out an entire life for! But that is what I tell God when I worry. I don’t think any one of us is free- totally free- from worry. The only reason I am writing this blog is because I feel a weight of worry myself. It’s strange, but sometimes, I don’t realize the state of my own heart until I start to share it with others in writing.
That’s another thing about worry: when we keep it all to ourselves, it tends to fester. Like a gangrenous wound, slowly eating away at is. But we are not creatures who are made to be alone. We were made in the image of our Creator, the Trinity. Community is an innate part of our nature! God created us to be together, to share, support, and serve one another. Whether we are sharing our joys, or our worries.
I believe Corner Bible is such a community… but here’s the thing: we all have to be open and willing to share ourselves to create this sort of community of believers. We have to be brave enough to share both the good, and the ugly parts of ourselves.
So what are we going to do? I think all the blogs, all the devotionals, all the words of encouragement in the world cannot cast away our worry. It comes down to us making a decision: “Am I going to give in and let myself worry about XYZ, or will I actually lay it down and trust God to take care of it?”
The song “You Hold It All” by the Porter’s Gate has really been speaking to me this week. The last three lines of the song say this:
“All our dreams, all our plans, our ambition / Lay it down, lay it at Your feet / Even if nothing comes to fruition / Lay it down, lay it at Your feet.”
There are a a few especially precious plans and dreams that I have to lay down. It’s both painful and relieving to say, “no matter what comes of this, I trust Your plan for me, God” and then let it go for Him to deal with as He wills.
Whatever you are worrying about and holding onto, I pray that you would be given the strength to lay them down at the feet of Jesus. He is beyond capable of taking care of even the smallest details. We can trust Him.
“Commit your way to the LORD; trust in Him, and He will act. … The LORD knows the days of the blameless, and their heritage will remain forever; they are not put to shame in evil times; in the days of famine they have abundance.” -Psalm 37