Cracks: Nov 2 - 8

I have brought you glory on earth by completing the work you gave me to do. 
Jn. 17:4

I try to live with joy, but sometimes the tide of worry rises and I get swept into deep waters of anxiety. Sometimes it's health concerns, like Pete's torn ACL. Sometimes it's life's endless paperwork, like the water bill and the insurance renewal. Sometimes it's our future or our family, and sometimes it's just the cracked plaster and sloping floors of our vintage old house.

I told Pete I wanted to move this week. I didn't really mean it because I love this house, but every time I see a new crack across a wall or hear a new creak that wasn't there before, the panic swells up and I wonder how long it will be until this home is just a heap of bricks in a grassy lot. My eyes trace little fractures across a wall and I imagine the whole room splitting in two. I add up pounds in my head, tallying the weight that might bring a whole house crumbling. I tiptoe across floorboards.

I'm not complaining. Life is hard and it's chock-full of reasons to hope for Heaven. I expect struggles and I shouldn't aim towards eliminating them. It's the worry about the struggles that I shouldn't tolerate. And I'm noticing that worry tends to get the best of me when I'm absorbed solely in my own story. Anxiety blooms when I dwell in my own little kingdom. So I naturally find myself fretting when I'm thinking about my version of a perfect life instead of opening my heart to the lives of others. When the cracks in my wall get my attention before the cracks in my relationships, it's clear that my priorities are out of sync.

In thinking about worry this week, I was challenged toward a few antidotes:

1. Choose gratefulness instead. A place of anxiety is the perfect setting to practice intentional gratefulness.

2. Pray. And not just for the need that's worrying me, but also for someone or something else to remove my mind from the worry.

3. Relocate. A walk, a trip to the store, even just a little stroll out onto the patio brings a fresh perspective to a simple worry, redirecting my mind toward peace.

As long as I'm walking life here, there will be things to worry about. But refusing that worry and instead choosing gratefulness and joy is the path of the faithful. I am praying for increased faith to kick worry out of my home this week. And if you are prone to worry, I'm praying for you too.