Henri Nouwen: Worry
“One of the most notable characteristics of worrying is that it fragments our lives. ... Worrying causes us to be ‘all over the place,’ but seldom at home. One way to express the spiritual crisis of our time is to say that most of us have an address but cannot be found there.”
___Henri Nouwen in You Are the Beloved (Convergent Books, 2017).
I know exactly what Nouwen is talking about. When my life is consumed with worry, I am not centered and not at home spiritually. Worrying about elections, worrying about our health, worrying about if my next talk or sermon will go well, worrying about falling, worrying about my children and grandchildren, worrying that I will get the flu, worrying about our next project, worrying about our next trip, worrying about friends.
When my life is full of worry, I lose my connection to God. There is no time for God, or when I try to connect, I keep going back and connecting to all the problems causing me to worry. My experience also is that worry becomes exponential. I have one problem I worry about, and suddenly a score of other problems I need to worry about present themselves.
Is there any solution? My experience is that first I must notice what is going on. Awareness, our first steps on any spiritual path. My best antidote is always going outside in Nature, where I realize a tiny part of the vastness of a power greater than myself. I share where I am with spiritual and 12 step friends.
I realize how little control I have over my life. I learn to do the best I can and then turn it over to God. I do all I can to prevent a fall; I prepare the best I can for talks and sermons; I have never missed a voting opportunity; I pray daily for my children and grandchildren and friends and especially the sick; I do all I can to live a healthy lifestyle. Then I learn about surrender. I try to turn all these worries over to the God of my understanding, again in prayer. Sometimes I have to do this more than once, usually many times during a day.
The worry that lives right over our shoulder can consume us and take away our energy and our relationship to God and our friends and family and the world during this pandemic.
Joanna. joannaseibert.com