Cartoon of a man in a fetal position. He says to another, "I'm okay. This is just how I get creative."
No one really knows the future. We can make assumptions based on past experience and current data, but it’s still a guessing game. And if all the predictions are based on fear, worry is wasted creativity.
Anxiety can limit our creativity. Whether our surroundings make us anxious, or we put too much pressure on ourselves to be creative, fear and anxiety can stymie us. It wastes our imagination when we think about all the bad things that have happened, are happening now, and could happen.
The energy we put into fretting only serves to encourage those circumstances. I have found the old adage, what we think about, we bring about, to be way too prophetic.
We can worry about all sorts of things. Are the kids okay? What about that strange noise coming from the car? What about that pain that I’m feeling in my gut? Could what happened to that family on the news happen to us? All the potential anxiety led to this worry about worrying cartoon.
Worry is an addiction. As a kid, I worried about whether I would ever grow up. I worried if that rough-talking kid would turn on me and become my bully. I worried about being good enough or just being good!
Yesterday was Charles Schulz’s birthday. He was the reason this kid would go out and get the newspaper before anyone else had the chance and he inspired me to draw cartoons. A quote attributed to him reminds me why worry rarely works.
“Don’t worry about the world coming to an end today. It is already tomorrow in Australia.”
The reason worry rarely works is it neutralizes faith and hope. Worry says that we don’t trust and we fear. It’s an acknowledgment that there are so many factors out of our control. If we fear our lack of control, it leads to worry. But if we rest in the hope things will be better, It can be empowering.
Worry is a waste of creativity. When we imagine the worst, what is the point of doing anything to improve the future? If we’ve done all that we can, shouldn’t we rest in the comfort that God can take it from there? Jesus had a little to say on this subject.
“Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own.”
Stay in the moment and don’t worry about tomorrow. There are things I worried about forty years ago that never came to be. And none of us could have foreseen the challenges of today. None of our worries from yesterday made a difference for today, except it may have raised our blood pressure and caused us to age a little quicker.
There is certainly no shortage of things to worry about today. Security of any kind feels like it’s in short supply. What seemed like a sure thing at the beginning of 2020 is a distant memory four months later.
Many of us have time on our hands, thanks to no commuting, travel or group activities. This week would have been busy for my wife and me because, well, it’s the week before Easter. But now, we have plenty of time wondering what we would have been doing if things were out and about.
Worry is counter-productive. It not only robs us of joy, but also creativity, hope, productivity, and well-being. It takes responsibility to improve things out of our hands and puts it in the hands of governments and institutions that are frankly struggling too.
If you find yourself worrying today, turn off the news, start finding some things to be grateful for, and ask what this makes possible. Start envisioning a future where you are on the other side of this crisis and are better for it. We will learn from this season. And remember, it’s only a season. Things will change. They will one day change for the better.
I’m a professional worrier. I worry about my kids. I worry about the world my future grandkids may one day inherit. I worry too much about finances, climate, politics, and if we have enough of the vital things like popcorn in the cupboard and ice cream in the freezer.
I come from a long line of worriers. I remember riding with my grandmother to pick up my grandfather from a trip. He was on a tour bus. The whole time, she was fretting that the bus could be in a fatal accident, that he possibly didn’t make the bus (it was long before cell phones), that she didn’t get the address to the pickup up site right. By the time she got all of her worries out, I was a nervous wreck and Grandpa was right there with group, waiting for us.
There have been times in my life when I’ve felt like the two goldfish in my illustration. I just know the bowl is going to burst any moment and I’ll be clinging for life. Can anybody relate?
Worry weighs a person down; an encouraging word cheers a person up.
This proverb reminds me of what a comfort it is to give a word of encouragement. It can be easy to get discouraged by all the bad news and the prophets of doom. But an encouraging word lightens my load. It lets me see how silly my worries can be. An encouraging word gives me hope and reminds me that the vast majority of things I worry about never happen.
This is why I have decided to blog daily. Tomorrow, I will have blogged daily for three months. I hope if you have followed along, you have been encouraged along the way.
So be encouraged, my friend! Things aren’t as bad as they seem. At the very least, you don’t live in a cracked fish bowl!
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