A new baby arrives in the
world! Ready to go home, this new life is wrapped in a receiving blanket,
gently placed in a car seat, and carried over the threshold from life on the
inside to life on the outside… This new person went from the perfect conditions
of innocence, happiness, love, nourishment, protection, warmth, and growth, to its new environment of
opposites: hunger and fullness, hot and
cold, health and sickness, largeness and smallness, togetherness and aloneness,
love and fear.
And a mother now
experiences a new world as well. Worry
has entered her mind in a heightened and
pronounced way. The phrase, I am a mother and I will worry takes on
a life of its own. We have given birth to a new belief in our minds, that the world is
a fearful place. We have swaddled this
belief in the blankets of what if’s.,
embrace it with arms outstretched, and
hold it close to our hearts,
treasuring its presence in our lives.
We feed it and grow it in the wombs of our imaginations…the umbilical
cord of life being our feelings and emotions,
other people’s comments, comparisons, and observations. This new belief we’ve given birth to needs
us, is dependent upon us for life, cries out to us, and looks to us for support
and encouragement.
While we hold a new baby
in our arms, we cradle a new level of worry in our minds. When you are exhausted, physically on
overload, and on call 24 hours a day, anyone who tells you Don’t Worry Be Happy is met with a look that could kill.
But it is exactly what God
has “in mind” for us. In His mind is happiness and He wants our mind to be a
mind of happiness, lest we kill ourselves with worry. While we had a part in the creation of a new
life, we also are constantly in a state
of creation when we worry. In fact, worry
is simply the misuse of our creative powers.
It is a misplaced intention. It
is a wrongly directed thought. It is a
curse rather than a blessing.
In order for a baby to be
born, there is a system in place for
conception, growth, and birth. Sperm and egg have to join and implant itself in
the lining of a uterus in order to have a baby as the end result. Labor and
movement of the baby through the birth canal, mom, baby, and nature working
together, has to happen in order for us to hold a new person in our arms.
Physically, we know this system to be the reproductive system. In order for life to happen, all of this has
to work in harmony in order for the miracle of life to take place.
What we don’t always
understand, is that worry has its own reproduction system. A repetitive thought of lack, with a strong
emotional feeling of negativity, is the conception of fear. When these two conditions are joined
together, this new cell of impossibility embeds itself in the lining of our
womb-mind. Its umbilical cord of
negative creativity continually feeds that worry, grows it, and it solidifies
inside our self, taking the shape and form of “life”. We labor over our new worry. We feel its pain, yet we love it! We feel it kicking us and growing till there
is no more room to grow on the inside.
Crowded and needing more space to grow, it too moves down the birth
canal of our hearts and into the open spaces of our mouth, through our speaking of
fear and lack, and out into the world, in the exact form that our imagination
has held. And then we ask, “How did this
happen to me?”
Life was reverently and
wonderfully made by God. Worry was
reverently and wonderfully made by us. Worry gives us a false sense of power. It is
how we keep ourselves distracted from the present moment. It keeps us in the mindset of victim and
gives us the excuse that life, or God, has done this to me. If we fly into our heaven-minds, God must be
there, not lack. If God and all of life
is for us, then worry is against us. God
did not create the conditions that we believe have caused us to worry.
We create the conditions in
our mind that give life and energy to worry.
When we pray the Lord’s prayer, we are praying to be delivered from our
belief in worry and the temptation to believe in lack. We don’t walk on worried waters, we walk on
peaceful waters. We don’t reach for the
cloak of tragedy, we reach out to touch the cloak of happiness. We lower our mats to be in the presence of love instead of lying
in our bed of fear.
Are we better mothers,
better women, better human beings because we worry?
Are we more loving human
beings because we worry? Worrying keeps
us afraid to feel happy. In fact, it
makes feeling happy seem foreign and even dangerous. We are more comfortable in the worrisome
thought than a thought of paradise. We almost admire those bent over in the
weight of struggle than the person standing tall in the lightness of perfect
provision. Worrying is “serious
business” and is disguised as being productive and involved. Laughter is seen as “monkey business”. A
playful heart could never be as productive, right? It is impossible to laugh and hold a
worrisome thought at the same time.
The word “worry” is in our
bible and what we are asked to do is easily grasped by its reader. Therefore
I tell you, Do not worry about what you are to eat, or drink, or wear. Is not life more than food and the body more
than clothing…..Can any of you by worrying add a single moment to your lifespan?....Don’t
worry about tomorrow, tomorrow will take care of itself.
How do we keep ourselves
from worry? How do we put a stop to the
endless stories we tell ourselves about what might happen? How do we put a halt to the what if’s, the how am I’s, and the but’s and the where is that going to come from?
If we try to resist, the
worrisome thoughts will persist. Instead
of resisting, try replacing. You can
acknowledge the worry, thank it, and then give all your energy and feeling to
the best outcome. Just as the new mother holds her perfect baby
in her arms, while the rest of the world
and all her cares melt away, as she gives her child her complete love and
attention, noticing every detail of perfection – the child’s eyes, all her
fingers and toes, her wisp of hair, and her ruby red lips... the tiny sounds of stretching and the perfect
rhythm of her breath… hold, in your heart’s arms, the perfect outcome, and
allow the rest of your worry-world to melt away, giving all your love and
attention to visualizing the details of a positive and happy experience.
We take golden thoughts
and little by little we melt them down into a golden calf and kneel before it,
bowing at the altar of worry and fret. Prayer and grace will cause us to
abandon that altar and, instead, take the hand of a happy angel who will
deliver us to the altar built from a new earth, from the rich soil of love, safety, contentment,
and abundance. A place at the table
where we can rest our mind and let it feast on the riches of God’s promise to
meet our every need. A place to come and
pray where even a mere sparrow sings because God cared for it. A place where every hair on my head is
counted and blessed. A place to simply behold the power and glory of
God. Just last night, my oldest, Clare, came to me well past her bed time, full of worry. She is going to attend a sleep-over where she doesn't know the other girls who will be there. One worry led to more worries, and pretty soon she not only worried about the sleep-over, she was worrying about the teacher she would have next year, and whether or not she was going to like her, and she would have found more things to worry over. I stopped her, and we read the scripture about casting your cares upon the Lord. We asked God to remove the fear. I helped her find new thoughts to think until she smiled and even laughed. Worries have a tendency to multiply at night, in the darkness and quiet, with no distractions, and no companionship. Our minds tend to take on the darkness of our bedrooms, and we forget that God's light never goes out, that we must remember that the sun never has to set on our thinking. Our thoughts can be as warm and happy and positive as in the daytime. Even the night is not without light to you; the night is as bright as the day, for night is as light to you. Psalm 139
Every
day, I will walk with joy to the altar of life, and when I lift my eyes to the hills of
challenges before me, I will know that
my help comes from God, and not from worry. Olivia once asked me what I ate when she was in my
tummy. What will we feed our
imaginations? What we feed our hearts
and minds determines what we will see and experience in our world. Whenever Olivia and I sing “Row, row, row
your boat, gently down the stream.
Merrily merrily merrily life is but a dream”, it reminds me that our lives are really
nothing but the dreams we conceived in our
hearts and minds, and casting aside all
worry, the intentional thoughts of love, happiness, safety, and prosperity will
keep our boats rowing ever so gently and merrily down the stream of life.
