What a Great Relief!

The future is something that we don’t ordinarily know very much about. Almost everything about the future is uncertain to us in the present. This often leads people to worry about the future, a predicament that many, if not most, of us share, to some degree or the other.

Do you find yourself often worrying about the future? Are you anxious every now and then that something unwanted might happen, or that something you want to happen might not? Are you often, if not constantly, fearful of what the future might hold, for you or someone you are close to? I don’t know about you, but this is the way my life has been for me, from early childhood onwards: I have, you see, been a chronic, obsessive, compulsive worrier.

Generally, the things that I have worried about relate to something negative or the other that I fear might happen with me, to me, through me or because of me. This habit started very early on in life. I was perhaps not yet five years of age when I developed a deep anxiety about going to school. I simply hated school. I worried about being ragged by bullies there, a fear that was vastly magnified when, at the age of less than ten, I was sent by my parents to a boarding school located far from home, where ragging was vicious.

As I grew up, worrying became an obsession for me—my mind, it seemed, was addicted to worrying. I worried about many different sorts of things. My worrying became so deeply rooted that it seemed I couldn’t exist without it.

The years went by and my worrying became even more chronic, but all through there was not a single person I felt I could share my anguish with, neither at home, nor elsewhere. Maybe even the very thought that I could or should share my condition with someone did not cross my mind even once. Perhaps I was too scared or embarrassed to tell anyone else about what I was going through. It was only much later in life, when I was in university, that I dared to speak about my fears with somebody—a psychiatrist. Based on his professional understanding, he gave a medical label to my predicament and suggested I take a certain medicine. I did as he said—so desperate was I for a cure and such trust did I have in the word of someone whom I possibly saw as an ‘expert’ who supposedly knew my condition better than I knew it myself even though I hardly knew him.

It was only much later in life that I recognized that my affliction was actually a spiritual one, and so, one that required a spiritual cure. I came round to the understanding that there is a God who loves us and cares deeply for us and is ever-present to assist us in our every need. This God, in fact, wants us to turn to Him for His help as we journey through life. He knows it is perilous for us to try to sail through life's stormy sea alone, without Him. He offers to be not only our intimate Travelling Companion during this journey of ours but also our ship's Captain so that we can safely navigate the choppy sea and arrive safely on the other shore. As the One who brought us into being, He cares truly for our wellbeing.

This God is our Divine Parent and we are His children, whose every need He lovingly provides and whose Parental help is always available to us. He invites us to have an intimate, personal, conversational relationship with Him. In this way, we can share our woes with Him and ask Him for His assistance. No matter what problem we might face, we can approach Him directly and seek and secure His aid. This being so, we don’t need to carry on life struggling all by ourselves, relying only on our puny efforts and resources: we have the Almighty Lord of the universe Himself with us whose help we can access at any moment as we move on in life's journey, including if and when we face challenges that we find daunting. As the Bible teaches: "Give all your worries to Him because He cares for you." (1 Peter 5:7)

For me, this means I have no reason whatsoever to continue to drag myself through life, worrying about this or that, as if life is meant to be a grave drudgery: I can turn to this God, our Divine Parent, whenever I might face a challenging situation, such as something that I would agonize over in the past all by myself, and ask Him to take it over. And so, I can simply say to Him: "God, You please handle it." Oh what a great relief!