Today at church a woman spoke about worrying. I’ve been doing a lot of this lately–I worry about my nephews, worry about my siblings, worry about my parents, and if I’m still awake, I start to worry about my own mortality. Garrison Keillor said this about mortality in last week’s “News from Lake Wobegon,” after explaining that we tolerate people complaining about the cold because we can’t talk about the things that really trouble us:
“What really troubles you is you are middle-aged, and you can see the end from here, and mortality is what bothers you, and death is out there waiting somewhere…”
So I’ve been worrying lately, is what I’m saying.
As this woman spoke about worry, and its futility, and shared some strategies for how to at least minimize worry, she shared a story of being in a class where someone asked “How many of us here are worriers?” Only she heard “How many of us here are warriors?”
Such a small vowel affect that makes a huge difference, and I wonder if I am capable of shifting my own worry paradigm to a warrior paradigm. I can still be concerned about my nephews and siblings and parents and even my own mortality, but if I approach them all as a warrior, as someone who will fight for them (including myself), maybe the worrying will take care of itself.
It’s worth a try.
