Turning Worry into Peace

If I had to pick a word to describe last year for me, if would be Worry.  Not a good word, not a word I'm especially proud of, but it's what characterized the year for me.  I let it overtake me at times.  I was so stressed out about the future.  I felt so small and impossibly insignificant, like I had no control over everything that was going on around me.  Not like my life was spiraling out of control and I could do nothing about it -- but I'm a teenage girl, and it's easy to dramatize life and blow it up bigger than it is.  Because learning to drive stick is not an impossible situation, just a hill to climb.  And the enormity of college costs and the vast future before me is not something to stay up nights, my stomach in knots.

But lately I've felt a distinct peace wash over me.  As I sit here filling out college applications and scholarship forms, as I drive myself to the grocery store, as I start to make decisions that directly affect my future -- I find a sort of stillness.  A bit of quiet.  Because I've decided life is sort of like knitting lace.  The charts are long and confusing, but if I tackle it one stitch at a time, I can conquer the entire shawl.  It's a weird analogy, but it makes sense in my head.  If I decide to live each day at a time, without worrying too much about the day after today, I find peace.  Because today is about writing a blog post, and filling out a form, and grocery shopping, and reading Psalm 31 -- and that is all.  Whatever else happens this day is a blessing.  If I find more time to read the Bible, or to sit and reply to emails, that is a blessing.  Because I want to live in this day, the one and only day created just for today.  There will never be another day just like this one, never a day with the same words or thoughts or clouds that drift out of sight.  And everyone knows that tomorrow never comes, there is always another "today" that comes and replaces the last.  So I want to decide to leave tomorrow to my Father, who is the only One who can reach tomorrow today.  And that gives me Hope.

"But I trust in you, O Lord;

    I say, “You are my God.”

15 

My times are in your hand;

    rescue me from the hand of my enemies and from my persecutors!"

(Psalms 31:14-15)