The Lord has been teaching me a lot lately about worry.

I let my fear control me so often. I get anxious, and I start thinking the same things over and over, worrying like a hamster running on a wheel. I’m doing a lot of work, but I’m not going anywhere. I get off the hamster wheel and I’m exhausted, but I still haven’t done anything and I’m no closer in the end to any kind of solution because I’ve worried about it.

Last night, my oldest (foster) daughter came to me and said that she had missed too many days of wrestling practice and that the coach “went off” on her. Now, she’s 16, so this could literally mean that he was talking to her sternly and she would have still been upset about it. But, she’s worked really hard and has gone to the practices and really wants to be part of this team.

The only problem is – foster care. We don’t have any control over the schedule, and a lot of times she will have visits with her dad or orthodontist appointments, or med management appointments in another city. This week, she went to tell the coach that she had a job interview and that next week she will miss another day for an oral surgery.

She came home upset because he told her that if she wanted to be on the team, she couldn’t miss another practice.

I went straight into worry mode. I very quickly internalized what the coach told her and took it personally. I was trying so hard to keep things running smoothly, I was re-arranging our schedule to get her to every practice AND every orthodontist appointment AND every parent visit. I’m not doing a good job of managing my work life because of all of this, and I felt like the coach was saying it’s not enough.

To add to all of that, her coach is one of my husband’s friends.

I was on the hamster wheel for about 2 hours. I worried that she was going to get kicked off the team after working so hard. I worried that we would have to cancel the orthodontist appointments and that her insurance wouldn’t pay for her braces. I worried that I would get fired from my job if I had to take her on my lunch break to the orthodontist and try to get back to work in my hour break. I worried that the coach would call my husband and they would get into an argument over this stupid ordeal.

There was no reason for all of this worry.

But I couldn’t stop it. I was making myself sick over it. Typing it all out this morning, it doesn’t even make sense except that Satan was trying to get me the way that he knows best. When I picked our girl up from church, she told me that she had thought about it, and that she didn’t think she needed a job right now with her class load and her wrestling schedule. It made me a little sad for her, because she’s worked hard to get these job interviews. But, it also made me so proud. That’s a very adult decision, and it shows me that she’s thinking about what she wants most and prioritizing that, which is HUGE growth over here. We also checked her oral surgery appointment, and it’s in the middle of the day, so she doesn’t even have to miss wrestling that day.

All of the conflicts that were so important that couldn’t be re-scheduled were already working themselves out.

This morning, I’ve had to confess all of that worry. Last night, even in the middle of it, I was trying to just hand it over to the Lord and not worry about it again. But I’m so bad at that. I just kept picking it back up and worrying about it some more. In the grand scheme of things, what I was worried about doesn’t even matter. So what if she got kicked off the wrestling team? We would have found something else for her to do. So what if everything blew up and my husband lost a friend? He has other friends. Those feel like big things, don’t get me wrong, but they aren’t the end of the world. They aren’t worth making myself sick over.

This morning, the Lord reminded me that when I worry like that, and I try to take control of every single thing that can or will happen in my life, I make Him so small in my mind. I take the All-Powerful God of the Universe that created me and knows me and works all things together for my good and His glory, and I reduce Him to a magic genie in the sky that I only ask to help me when things are really bad or when I want something.

When I worry about things like I have some level of control over what will happen in the future, I am essentially telling God, “I’ve got these things, I’ll fix them on my own if I think about it hard enough”. This is exactly the opposite of what He asks of us.

Matthew 6:25-27 says,” This is why I tell you not to worry about everyday life- whether you have enough food and drink, or enough clothes to wear. Isn’t life more than food, and your body more than clothes? Look at the birds of the air. They don’t plan or harvest or store food in barns, and yet your Heavenly Father feeds them. Aren’t you more valuable than they are? Can you by worrying add a single year to your life?”