Unlearning Worry

Somewhere along life's journey I learned how to worry. I know that it's learned behavior because children don't worry, at least not like adults do. They may get afraid and have some apprehension about things that are frightening to them, but the constant projection of fear into the present from the imaginary future that comprises worry is not present in children who are in healthy environments.

I am not sure how I learned to worry so well. I had plenty of models, of course, both in the home and outside of it. And there were enough harsh events in life to darken my thoughts about the future. Neither did I have anyone to teach me any other way of looking at life, so worry became the culturally acceptable way for me to look at the future.

But how do you unlearn "the fine art of worrying"? Our recent and continuing journey through the dark places of life has revealed to me that I still don't have a lot of answers to this, but I have learned a few things that are beginning to erode the old patterns and replace them with new ones that are "worry free" or at least worry diminished.

First, I am learning not to worry about worrying. I wrote about this in an earlier blog (September 23, 2009). Taking the guilt factor out of worrying has helped me run to God more quickly with my fears (worry is fear, of course).

Second, I am learning that learning not to worry is in fact a learning process. Paul says this in Philippians 4:12, "I have learned the secret of being content in any and every situation" (i.e., "I have learned not to worry about my circumstances"). Since Paul wrote this late in his life, it gives hope to the rest of us, eh? But what this means for me right now is that even though by last year at this time I had learned to be peaceful and unafraid about many things, the huge and unexpected pressure of this one year battle against disease has exposed a whole new flock of fears that I get to learn how to give to God! And if I didn't know that I am learning (and that that's okay) I would tend to be discouraged by the fact that something I thought I had learned seemed to have disappeared. I hope this makes sense--it's really important to me right now. The last thing we need to do when great pressure is on us is feel defeated about things that God is making deeper in us!

Third, and most important, I am learning that connecting to God in His Father-love (to use Andrew Murray's term) is the key to banishing worry. Now I have known this for a while now, and I have even written about it before, and I have read buckets of books about it, of course, but learning doesn't take place until something is experienced. And if we are to learn something more deeply than before, the experience must be something that presses us harder, I think. This, of course, is what I am learning by experience right now (perhaps some of you are as well). Now the hard part about this is that worry/fear by definition tend to drive us away from God's Father love, and this tendency is reinforced by our adversary whose weapon of choice is fear. But this is precisely where my new discovery is found. I am discovering that God pursues us in our fears. In remarkable ways, even when I am too weak even to call out to Him, God chases me down and arrests me with His love in the midst of my worry. Yes, I can still choose to turn away from Him (and sometimes I do), but He persists in His pursuit of those whose hearts are set on Him, and eventually He captures me/us again with His love. That happened to me even this morning as I was reading (for the umpteenth time) With Christ In The School of Prayer by Andrew Murray. In the midst of recent struggles with fear (again!), I was ambushed by God's Father-love as I read chapter three of this remarkable book. I saw again the picture of a loving Father bending down and reaching out to His floundering child. Perhaps you will smile as I do now as you see the picture of what happened. I close with this picture.

I am reading along, trying once again to learn how to pray, aware of underlying worry and yet not aware of it, trying to connect with God's Father heart yet focused more on me than Him. In that condition I read the following words (italics are mine): "when you go to private prayer your first thought must be that the Father is waiting for you..." Don't let a cold and prayerless heart keep you from the presence of the loving Father...Do not think about how little you have to give to God, but about how much He wants to give to you. Just place yourself before His face and look up into it. Think of His wonderful, tender, concerned love. Tell Him how sinful, cold and dark everything is. The Father's loving heart will give light and warmth to yours."

Sigh...I am still learning, but I can assure you that what this dear departed saint wrote is true. We can learn not to worry, not all at once but in stages, and our hope for doing so rests not in us but in a loving Father who pursues us even in our fears and arrests us with His love, chasing us into the darkest valleys of despair and waiting there for us to turn and look up. What wondrous love is this? And yet I am still just learning...

Tom, one of Abba's children