A SECOND Suggestion to Help You Worry Less

The timing of the January 30, 2021 Brewster Rocket:  Space Guy! cartoon strip was perfect for this, my second post about worrying.

Panel 1

Young boy:  I look up my symptoms online because I worry about everything!

Young girl:  Ever worry that all that worrying could give you an ulcer?

Panel 2

(They both look at each other, silently.)

Panel 3

Young boy:  (Slightly annoyed, with hands on hips) Well, I will now!

Young girl:  Sorry.

That sums up where many of us live when it comes to worrying. We worry, and then we worry about worrying.

Last time, I suggested you address this issue by doing some rough estimates of the realistic likelihood of the calamity you fear actually happening. In most cases, the odds of the terrible outcome may be far less than the likelihood that your suitcase will be the very first one onto the airport conveyor belt after a packed flight.

This week, I have another suggestion.

Years ago, I found myself fretting about seemingly everything in my life, and I wondered how rooted in reality my anxiety was. So, I decided I would keep a list of every single thing I worried about for a whole week. At the end of the experiment, my list sported more than two dozen items. Most were either pretty trivial or rather far-fetched:

• “Did I really lock the door when I left the house this morning?” – Turns out I had.

• “Was it a mistake to leave that bill payment out in our mailbox for the postman to collect? What of someone steals it?” – No one did.

• “This is the second headache I’ve had this week. Any chance it could be a brain tumor?” – To this day, I have no scars on my skull, so, no. No tumor.

A couple of items were more serious. My wife Annette was about seven months into her second pregnancy, and she told me she hadn’t felt the baby move in a few days. Now that is cause for concern.

At week’s end, I reviewed my list and realized only one or two of the things I had stewed over had actually happened, and they were very minor. (Thankfully, the baby was fine, and we welcomed Stephanie into this world a few weeks later.)

Realizing how much emotional energy I had expended being troubled about dozens of things that never happened helped me rethink my posture toward worry. A good rule of thumb is that if a potential problem isn’t serious enough to ask a friend to pray with you about, it probably isn’t worth worrying over either. (Of course, we never really should worry about anything.)

My best friend Billy Burke has the amazing ability to lay his head on his pillow at night and go right to sleep even in the midst of the most troubling circumstances. “Worrying isn’t going to fix anything, so why add to my problems by depriving myself of sleep?”

And another element to factor in is God’s character – the combination of his sovereignty over absolutely everything, his lavish love for you, and his wisdom in knowing what you truly need (which is often different from what you want). As hard as it is, we must view every circumstance – especially the troubling ones – through this three-fold understanding of God’s nature. That doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t do your part to address the issues before you. Of course you should. But try training yourself to view all your challenges through this lens of God’s trustworthiness.

And maybe – just maybe – you should try the “worry list” experiment yourself to see if your natural pattern matches mine.