On Worry

Worrying is like a rocking chair, it gives you something to do, but it gets you nowhere. ~Glenn Turner

Ever since people really started reading this blog, I've noticed a theme.  Within myself, and within others.

I don't know what it is about going through something like we went through, with the loss of a baby, but it shakes people to the core.  I think because suddenly, out of nowhere, everyone gets this realization: that if a baby can die, then what, on this sweet, sweet earth, is sacred?  Babies aren't supposed to die.  They're supposed to be our sign that the world still has some sort of sweetness, and goodness, and truth to it.  In fact, my mom had a little piece of art that she hung in her bathroom for years that read:

"A baby is God's way of saying the world should go on."

Last time I went home to my parents' house, I noticed it wasn't hanging in her bathroom anymore.  It was in the closet of the bathroom, tucked away on a little shelf.  I don't know when this happened, and I don't know if it's sitting on that shelf because of what happened with Kathryn, but I can't blame her in the least bit if it is.

Because it's just one of those things that just completely rock your sense of good and bad, of right and wrong, and of what's SUPPOSED to be.

So through the last year and a half, I've found that many, many people are opening up to me, and sharing with me.  Perhaps because they know that I get it.  I might not get the exact occasion of their worry, and of their sadness.  But I get the underlying fear.  I've received letters, phone calls, and many an email and message from people, all with different worries: infertility, miscarriage, job loss, marriage problems, questions over what they're doing with their lives....

And every message, every confidant, has the same theme:

We are worrying our lives away. 

Over things that we have ZERO control over.  In fact, I've learned this lesson more than anything else: Even things I think I have control over, I DON'T.  So I might as well let it all go.

I can't quite explain to you the freedom that comes in that.  The freedom that comes in saying, "You know what?  I don't understand this at all.  I don't understand WHY this is an issue in my life.  But WORRY, gets me nowhere.  So I'm giving it over.  To my God.  To someone and something so much bigger than myself, that I just don't have to fret.  That I can fall asleep at night, knowing that I'm just here, and it's all out of my hands." 

When Thomas was born, I had a lot of anxiety over him going to sleep at night.  I attribute alot of that to how media does as much as they can to just completely FREAK new moms out about the possibility of SIDS in every single way. 

So I developed a little prayer. 

"God, I can't be there for him all the time, but you can, so help me let it go."

And you know what?  You change that wording a little bit, and this prayer just works for everything.

I know I've talked alot about the serenity prayer before, but that's because there's a reason. 

Letting go of the worry, of the control, well, it's really the best thing to happen to me in the last year. 

Even now, as I'm already starting to feel this little bean bump around inside me, and as there are some unanswered questions at work I'm waiting on, and as we are trying to save for a new house, and as we continue to raise this awesome boy as he's deep in the throes of his terrible twos, I just have to say, the peace you feel when you say, "Well, we'll see.  It's out of my hands," I just can't tell you how freeing it is. 

Maybe it's the lazy girl's answer to wanting to be in control of everything and knowing it's not possible.  But whatever it is, it's working.

Worry doesn't do anything.

It only makes us paralyzed.

I read these letters, these messages from people, and my heart HURTS for each fear, each situation.  And I wish, like I'm sure others do, that I could take it all away.

But there's nothing to take the situation away, but time. 

And if that's the case, then worrying, well, it's just nothing but pointless.