Anxiety
Insofar as anxiety is to a large extent in the eye of the beholder, it’s also in the power of the beholder to control. Many kinds of anxiety are natural, almost healthy, especially if they’re concerned with others; a parent who didn’t worry about their child might seem almost inhuman. Yet still it’s uncanny how often we spoil our contentment by worrying about something that, if it did happen, would quicken us into a response much more practical than worry. Every time some kind of calamity has come into my life, I and everyone around me have responded with activity, unexpected strength, even an all but unnatural calm. So is anxiety all that good for parents? It’s only when we’re living in the future, the realm of “what if,” that we brilliantly incapacitate ourselves. In fact it was Milton who said the mind can “make a heav’n of hell, a hell of heav’n”. We worry only about exactly those things we can never do anything about. And then that very fact becomes something else we worry about. The cycle goes on and on until we let the mind give over to something larger — wiser — than itself. Invite someone to take a closer look at Christ who said don’t worry, and his church.
