That invisible sickness of the mind: worry

God can - and does - use the ordinary circumstances in our lives to teach us important lessons.

I most recently experienced this when I had two of my wisdom teeth extracted about three weeks ago, and then had to deal with the complications of those extractions. It turned out that I had a dry socket where my lower right wisdom tooth had been. Basically, this meant that I had deal with some extra pain and discomfort, a couple extra weeks of healing, and many visits to the oral surgeon's office to have his wonderful staff pack and repack my "hole" with gauze. Its been two weeks since I found out I had a dry socket, 5 days since I was able to have the gauze taken out, and I seem to be healing beautifully now.

During all of this I was perfectly calm and never once worried about what was going on in my mouth. In fact, it hardly crossed my mind. *laughs* Yeah, right! For those of you who know me well, you know that I love to worry. And these past few weeks have been no exception. Honestly, I was practically consumed with worry at times. You might even say that I was paranoid at points along the journey. Especially when I was experiencing such discomfort and pain several days after the surgery (the pain is supposed to decrease, not increase), and I didn't know what had gone wrong. Maybe I had developed a horrible infection that was going to take months of time and thousands of dollars to cure... or maybe I just had a dry socket. *laughs* I didn't know - but I did worry.

And here is what I learned: when we perceive our circumstances, our problems, and the objects of our worry as big deals - we lose sight of the fact that we serve an awesome God, that even the winds and the waves obey his voice, that He is the One who made and holds together all the stars in heaven that make the night sky so beautiful. And that is exactly what I did. My perceived problems were so monstrous that they blocked my vision of God. He was there with me all along... I just couldn't see Him.

Here is the sad, but funny reality of my circumstances: my worry didn't do one iota of good in the end. It was - often - irrational, and useless. Worry is, in most cases, wasted emotional energy.

So why do we do it? I wish I knew. What I do know is that God is really smart. (Say it with me, Duh!) Matthew 6:27 says: "Who of you by worrying can add a single hour to his life?" The point is amazingly simple, but so hard to learn, and oh-so true. But I'm going to venture to take it to heart in the future... when my circumstances seem to inflate themselves in my mind and threaten to destroy my peace.