An Antidote for Worry
I have a very specific memory of when my husband learned the gender of our second child. We were those crazy parents who decided to wait until the baby was born to find out if we were having a boy or a girl. In all honesty, I cannot even remember if the doctor handed our baby to Ben or to me first. What I do remember is the look on his face when he held this precious little child for the first time. He stared at the bundle in his arms and then looked at me with eyes overflowing with tender adoration and complete surrender. “It’s a girl.”
Whenever he tries to describe the feeling of holding our little Wyndsor Grace for the first time to others, it usually ends in a summarizing utterance of: “My heart broke in a different way with that one.”
When our son was born, Ben held him with a heart of pride and expectation for the strapping, young boy God had given us. But with this little girl, a sense of fierce protection ignited within him. A passionate zeal to keep her from the woes of this world. He became like a lion protecting his cub. There would be nothing that would stop him from doing whatever it took to protect his vulnerable, precious, baby girl from whatever the world tried to throw at her. And as she grew, so did his desire to protect her from a world that “was not good enough for her.”
Of course, he would lay his life down for any of our children, but those first few moments of being a ‘girl dad’ made him keenly aware of the Papa Bear instincts within him. A few years later that sense burned within him anew when our next baby girl was born.
As many moms can relate, my Mama Bear instinct kicked in as soon as the second line appeared on the pregnancy test, and it has only intensified with each passing day. The extreme determination to shield our children from any harm is natural. It is a God-given instinct that triggers a whole new set of responsibilities and challenges we must now learn to navigate. One of those challenges is how to balance our fierce protective nature with self-restraint so that it does not become a hindrance to our children’s growth. I’ve already discussed this idea in my previous blogs, so I will refrain from rehashing the point that our children need opportunities where our protection doesn’t stifle their opportunities for growth. Instead, I want to address another feeling that accompanies this sense of protection that immediately pops up when we become a parent for the first time – and every time after that…
Worry.
As soon as the joy of pregnancy filled my heart, the worry accompanying it did, too.
I worried about being a mom.
What if I do something that causes me to miscarry?
What if I create emotional wounds with my parenting tactics?
What if I don’t know what to do?
What if we can’t provide for all their needs?
What if they don’t know how much I love them?
I worried about the child.
What if he gets sick and the doctors don’t know how to cure him?
What if I let him ride with someone and they crash? What if I crash?
What if my child is mean to others…or others are mean to her?
What if my discipline doesn’t work and he keeps getting in trouble?
What if He doesn’t make the team? Or if he does, what if he doesn’t play? Or if he does, what if he doesn’t get a hit…or worse, gets hit!
And then the evil one really gets ahold of my worry.
What if my children marry the wrong person?
What if the world corrupts their value system we worked so hard to set?
What if they walk away from their faith?
The list of worries is endless, and completely debilitating…
if I let that be what consumes my mind.
Your list of worries may be the same. Your list may be different. It may be less, or more. But I am quite sure you have all experienced worry in one way or another.
Jesus was quite sure of it, too. He even spoke to His disciples about it on numerous occasions. He asked them, “Can all your worries add a single moment to your life? Of course not.” (Matthew 6:27) He recognized the tendency for His children to worry and He reminded them that if God will provide for the birds in the air, how much more will He provide for the most valuable in all His creation, us? (Matthew 6:25-34) Instead of worry, He calls us to peace. Jesus acknowledged that His children would face hardship. That they would feel fear and anxiety. But He still did not give them permission to worry. Instead, He gave them a gift.
“I am leaving you with a gift – peace of mind and heart. And the peace I give isn’t like the peace the world gives. So don’t be troubled or afraid.”
-John 14:27
Now let’s flip the “What if” statements and look at worry from a different perspective: What if all my worries were replaced with the peace Jesus offers? I wonder how our lives, and our children’s lives, might be transformed if peace ruled our hearts in place of worry?
The apostle Paul offers us the antidote for worry. He says,
“Be anxious for nothing, but in everything, by prayer and supplication, with thanksgiving, make your requests be made known to God. And the peace of God which surpasses all understanding shall guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.” - Philippians 4:6-7
There is so much I’d like to say about prayer being our greatest weapon in the greatest war this world has ever fought… but that is for another blog. Right now, I would like to challenge you to join me in building a new (or refreshing an old) habit this year. Every time a worry creeps into our minds, let’s use the antidote of prayer to turn it into the peace He gives.
And, even more…what if we were proactive about our prayers?! What if we took a few minutes every morning to pre-emptively pray for our children before sending them into their day, and us into ours, rather than letting worry be the reminder? I wonder how that simple practice could transform our homes?
In the fire with you,
Toni
PS. I am praying for YOU, too. Here are some prayer cards that I use to pray Scripture over my children every day. These guides have helped me stay committed to this goal even when the words fail to come. I hope you will find them useful in your journey.