Abiding Monday: Fraught With Worry
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Worry has been following me around lately. I know how to combat it – I posted about praying for peace mere weeks ago – yet I am still being pestered with a fear about this or a worry about that. It is so annoying! And it’s a domino effect this time around; when one thing is resolved, another issue arises, giving my weary soul minimal rest in between.
At the moment, my worry is for my son. He’s kinda accident-prone. He’s a toddler, so saying he trips up on his own feet doesn’t mean that much. But he does. Trip up on his own two feet, that is. Regularly. This has resulted in some pretty nasty bumps on his head. (People actually look surprised when they see he is bump-free.) Last week, he fell on his face again, and the bump is an ugly combo of red, purple, blue and yellow. I can’t tell you how many times I have prayed over his little head, yet I cannot shake the worry that comes with being his mom. I seriously break down in sobs whenever he hurts himself.
Max Lucado’s latest book, Fearless, has a chapter about worrying for our kids’ safety. He says,
We tend to forget this fact, regarding our children as “our” children, as though we have the final say in their health and welfare. We don’t. All people are God’s people, including the small people who sit at our tables. Wise are the parents who regularly give their children back to God (58).
Lucado says we have two choices when faced with our childrens’ struggles (health or otherwise): to despair over what can happen, or to believe in Jesus’ power to love and care for them. Now, I realize that a bump on my son’s head is small potatoes compared to what else can happen to him – maybe compared to what has happened in your child’s life. Yet the despair I have felt is very real, and dealing with it is not easy.
As one might expect, prayer is the key remedy.
Prayer is the saucer into which parental fears are poured to cool. Jesus says so little about parenting, makes no comments about spanking, breast-feeding, sibling rivalry, or schooling. Yet his actions speak volumes about prayer. Each time a parent prays, Christ responds. His big message to moms and dads? Bring your children to me. Raise them in a greenhouse of prayer (60).
I believe in this advice, and I have been stubbornly giving my fears about my son’s injuries to Jesus, again and again, each time I feel them. Even though I wish I could put the boy in a plastic bubble and roll him everywhere in a cocoon of safety, I turn to God to increase my trust in Him. I involve my kids in this praying, too, saying prayers aloud while Eli plays and inviting both of my children to pray aloud for his head during bedtime prayers.
If my worries are going to persist, my prayers must persist as well.
Jesus, thank you for keeping watch over our children as they come and go. Thank you for standing beside us as a protective shade. Thank you for being our help. We depend on you. Amen.
What Psalms comfort you during your time of worry (mine was paraphrased above, Psalm 121)? Is your prayer time proportionate to the time you spend worrying? How do you work through your fears?
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There are so many days when I worry about my kids. I think nighttime is especially a vulnerable time for me. I worry about our son, who has diabetes, that he won’t wake up in the morning from a diabetic low or that he’ll have a seizure and us not know it. I have been praying over them and their room every night for almost a year (since he was diagnosed) and I must say that it brings me peace and helps me sleep at night. I pray for protection from the enemy, that God would guard their hearts and minds, bring them to love and serve Him as they grow and for their protection when they sleep. I pray for them to wake happy and healthy. Prayer and reading the Word are the only things that keep me from worrying… I’m a total worry-wart on a normal basis. I have also found that if I pray for faith to trust that God will keep us safe, I find a great amount of peace. It’s not really a Psalm, but the scripture that I have been holding to recently is Joshua 1:9 “Have I not commanded you? Be strong and courageous. Do not be frightened, and do not be dismayed, for the Lord your God is with you wherever you go.”
It is so easy to forget about praying for our kiddies. My son had a huge fall while we were vacationing in a rural village in China. He was 2 1/2 and I cried out to God as I watched his eyelids flutter shut. It was a brief moment of unconsciousness but such a scary incident. Thankfully, God was watching over him. Since then however, I fear for him…when he’s on his bike, when he’s on the playground. Thank you for the reminder and the excerpt from Lucado. It really puts back into perspective that these children are not in our hands but in God’s most capable care.
Thanks Dawn! This message really hit home for me. I’m generally not much of a worrier, but lately, with things going (seemingly) downhill with our visa situation overseas, I am feeling increasing anxiety about our son, and our family in general; will we have to move again?! How is this going to affect his language acquisition? His ability to make friends? He had such a hard time with our last move, and I am afraid. My concern is mostly for his emotional welfare, and I know that, maybe two or three years down the road, things will have their proper perspective. I have had to give this to the Lord time and time again, on an almost daily basis.
Your question about prayer time being proportionate to worry time was a doozy. OF COURSE I WORRY MORE THAN I PRAY. Thanks for reminding me that it needs to be the other way around.
Ladies,
Thanks for sharing your heart about your fears and worries. I think it is good for us to say these things to one another; it is mutually encouraging and integral to growing in our faith. Lucado says elsewhere in the same book that we need each other, community, to carry each other through our worries and fears, too. I believe he called it “unleashing a army to battle our fears”.
It is true, Sharon, that perspective is a big part of this too. Years from now, we’ll look back on our childrens’ early years and think, “Everything turned out fine; I wish I hadn’t worried so much.”
Thank you for the great reference in Joshua, Christy.
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