All the wasted worry

I once spent a whole night worrying about a bug bite. Well, eight of them, to be precise. My son had been playing outside that afternoon and came in with a strange assortment of bites across his shoulder that didn’t look like anything I’d seen before. They weren’t your average Southeast Missouri mosquito bites, but I applied a topical medication anyway. And then I laid in bed all night wondering if my son was going to have some kind of anaphylactic reaction in the night. What if I don’t hear him in the night? What if those were poisonous bites? What if I missed something? Should we go to the hospital? I once spent a whole night worrying about a stomachache. We’d been through a difficult week of stomach bugs while my husband was away on a trip, and the thought of another week mothering through a virus prevented any pretense of sleeping that night. I laid awake all night listening for the first cry of distress from my kids upstairs. What if we’re all sick again? What if I have to endure another week of vomiting kids and perpetual laundry? What if I can’t do it? I once spent a whole night worrying about a power outage while staying in a hotel room. I was nervous about a work-related meeting the next morning, and when the whole city went dark for a few hours, I panicked in the worst way. What if I can’t leave this hotel? What if I miss my flight home? What if my mind goes blank at my meeting tomorrow? How many wasted hours of worry have I logged in my life? I could have been sleeping. I could have been praying. I could have been prying back my fingers from the grip of imagined sovereign control. I know that worry is a form of unbelief, and yet, I’ve struggled to unwind my lack of faith in God’s care for me from my fear of the worst happening. I know that God doesn’t promise to always keep us physically safe. There’s no guarantee that the worst won’t happen on this earth, and somehow, in the middle of the night, instead of sleeping, I try to hold the threads of safe living together with my anxious, worrisome hedging. I find it strange that I don’t have a problem trusting the Lord with my eternity, but I am loathe to trust him with my day.......

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https://www.glennamarshall.com/2022/02/03/all-this-wasted-worry/