I wish the following wasn’t true: anxiety, worry, and fear have been ruling me a lot lately.
First there was the helicopter crash with Kobe Bryant, it got my mind running circles: what if, what if. What if something like this happened to me, my kids, my spouse, or someone else I love?
Now, the COVID craziness. What if we get sick? What if there are no supplies in the store when we need them?
Man. You could live in the what if forever. It is crippling. You could choose to let it rule your mind. But I’m trying to choose JOY. I believe God calls us to focus our mind on the gifts every DAY, in the present and to find joy in them. If we spend our energy on worrying, we don’t get to fully LIVE. Yes I will die one day. But in the meantime I want to soak up what each day brings. A dance party with my toddler. Chocolate melting in my mouth. Friends who care. Coffee and a Mountain View.
If I do get COVID and maybe the truth is eventually I will at some point, I want to catch it having laughed and cried and had good food and played hard with my babies and enjoyed friendships and sunshine and fresh air. Of course I will follow CDC recommendations as best I possibly can for myself and for others. I will learn to enjoy friendship over a screen. I will practice this six foot rule for as long as I should. But I won’t let what I can’t control consume my mind and my life to the point where I am tiptoeing around in life, trying to avoid sickness and death. Sickness and death are going to eventually find me. They might as well find me living out JOY in a thousand ways.
Yes we can let fear rule us. But we can also choose joy over fear. We can choose to believe God’s promise in the thick of the hard.
As a believer, the eternal perspective reminds me death and sickness are not the end. Jesus died for us to have eternity with him. We need not be afraid when we know Jesus. And we can share this hope with others during this time. But fear is still a battle. I think of the reminder in scripture that God knows the sparrows. Each of them are taken care of every day and have food and life. They sing to their God, without fear. They know their creator.
“Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothes? Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they? Can any one of you by worrying add a single hour to your life?” Matthew 6:25-27
Things that have been helping me lately (and I hope will help you, friend):
⁃ doing small things to help others when I can. I asked my church to donate games to the kids I work with. It made them smile! It might not be a life saving mask. But it is a small thing, a good thing. And we need those right now. I’m thankful for a church that wanted to share the love of Christ. I can’t fix this whole problem (and reminder: God is I control of the fixing of the big and small). But I can focus on the small things in my realm of the world that I can help (and I think these “small” things mean the biggest things of all).
⁃ doing things you ENJOY. Remembering those things. They might look different. But they are important. Whether it’s exercise or cooking or talking to friends or sewing or writing. Do it with all your heart and soul. Do it well and keep doing it! We need to keep living out our passions right now.
⁃ Day by day, minute by minute, giving my mind and thoughts to the Lord. Identifying and Surrendering the worst of those thoughts. It’s okay to admit the worst of them. Present them to God in prayer. He can handle them.
⁃ A good friend reminded me of this: we serve a God who can calm storms, who created the heavens and the earths, who created humans with all we are- body, soul, mind, and who cares for us. He hasn’t left us.
⁃ My sister got me a picture that says JOY on it. Simple. Put it in a place you can see it. Soak up each day marveling in the tiny given joys.
⁃ This reminder:
⁃ The Lord is my rock and my fortress and my deliverer, my God, my rock, in whom I take refuge, my shield, and the horn of my salvation, my stronghold.”
Psalms 18:2
Joy over fear. I want to live in that today. I want my girls to see me choosing that every day.
