“Yeah, I thought I had trouble ’cause I had a hole in my shoe, till I saw a boy that didn’t have any feet.” Unknown  “Don’t worry about tomorrow, there’s plenty of stuff to worry about today . . ” Matt 6:33 (paraphrase)  “Don’t worry about anything, thank God for what you have, ask Him for what you need, and He’ll give you peace that’ll keep your heart and you mind thru Jesus our Lord.” Phil 4:6-7 (paraphrase)  (From a letter to my kids)

This was supposed to be about staying relaxed and letting the little stuff slide, because most things will work out by themselves.  Then I figured out it’s about not worrying.  It turns out that most big problems are made up of a bunch of small ones.

I still think you don’t need to worry about everything.  When you can do something about a problem, do it.  When you can’t, just put it out of your mind.  But sometimes that’s real hard to do; like when you don’t have enough money.  Everything that’s wrong seems to come back to money, and you sorta dwell on it.  When that happens, I try to follow that verse about turning it over to God.

‘Course I go through a ‘mental process’ to ‘talk myself out of’ worrying.  First thing is I say to myself, “I’m not going to think about that today.”  I’m not going to worry about what happens later.  After that I decide I’m gonna see how I’m doing right this minute.  What do I have to be thankful for right now?  I can usually think up a few things like, 1] I was able to get up this morning; 2] I got to sleep last night and eat this morning; 3] I may owe a lot of money right now, b ut they don’t throw people in jail for debt; at least not in the good ole U.S. of A.; and best of all 4] God has brought me through worse stuff than this, and I figure He will bring me through this crisis too.  By the time I get through with all that I’m usually feeling quite a bit better.  (And I don’t know why, but it makes me feel better that there are probably other people out there that are worse off than me.)

It’s kinda like Bob Gold says, “You just can’t worry about everything.” What that always meant to me was that “I may have to worry about that sometime, but not right now.  Maybe later.  Maybe I’m going to worry about something, but not that, not now.  In fact, maybe what I need is to go sit on the porch and have a cool beverage and solve the problems of the world with my friends.  Betterin’ worryin’.

‘Course there are a lot worse things than lack of money.  Like terminal illness; or divorce; or trouble with the law; when you get to things like that, you just have to turn it over to the Lord.  He will definitely take care of you, if you’ll just trust Him.