Worry

A couple weeks ago, I promised to begin writing two blog posts every week. Well, I haven't been doing a very good job at that, but I have a good excuse. I've been busy becoming an adult. Since the last time I wrote, I have moved to Cincinnati, Ohio so that I can begin seminary classes in just a couple weeks. This means that I have moved out of my parents' house and now have my own apartment with all of its responsibilities included. I have bills to pay and dinners to cook and robbers to keep out, and if I can be honest, it's stressing me out.

I've never before felt like I've had much of a problem with worry before. I like to think of myself as a pretty easy-going guy. I roll with the punches. I ride the waves. But one thing I have realized over the past week is that it's easy not to worry when you have other people taking care of you. I don't have to worry about my food when I have a parent to cook it or a college dining hall to walk to. I don't have to worry about having a well-maintained place to live when I sleep in a dorm room and the janitorial staff comes and cleans our hallway every day. When you're out on your own, so many of the concerns and responsibilities that you didn't even think of growing up are placed on your shoulders, and it can all begin to feel awfully heavy.

I'm not writing all of this as an excuse to say that worrying is alright and that it's just part of life. Scripture tells us that worry is not alright. Jesus taught that we shouldn't worry about food and clothes and all of the other things of life on this earth, because God is a good father who will take care of us. Our job is to seek God and to join in what he's doing in the world. 

So no, I am not trying to excuse worrying. I am simply confessing that this area is a weakness of mine. I am a worrier. I worry about having an expensive apartment but as of yet, not job to start paying for it. I worry about whether or not my culinary skills are going to be sufficient to cook that box of mac 'n cheese for dinner. I worry about whether or not I'm going to be able to handle the workload of grad school on top of working and taking care of my apartment. I worry about not being able to make friends in a new city. I worry about getting lost while driving around and ending up in the 'hood. I worry that it might have been a complete mistake to come to seminary and that maybe I should be doing something else.

There are a lot of worries that can pop up as you mature and enter new stages of life. If you're anything like me, you could make your own list of issues and concerns that worry you. When Jesus tells the parable of the sower and he talks about seed falling on different types of soil, he says that the seed that fell among thorns stands for those who hear God's Word, but then the worries of life choke it out. It's easy for me to read that and start thinking about people I know who are like that, but when I'm honest, I'm like that more than I would like. In Crazy Love, Francis Chan writes about this parable, and he warns us to never assume that we are the good soil in the story. We need to check our own hearts and attitudes to make sure that we really are trusting God with our lives. We need to do this when life seems to be going easy, and we need to do it when life is hard too. Now that I'm an "adult," Jesus' words about worry are so much more challenging to me.

So maybe I have a lot of things to worry about. But the truth is that I'll be okay. I'm not dealing with anything that millions of other people haven't already gone through as they begin their lives on their own. I have incredible friends and family who support me and pray for me. And most importantly, I have a God walking beside me who is capable of taking care of me. It may be that God hasn't allowed me to find a job in Cincinnati yet because he knows that my body and my mind need a couple weeks of rest before classes start. It may be that he hasn't gifted me with talent in cooking because there is an excess of ham sandwiches in the world, and he needs me to eat them all. Who knows? At times, it feels like I'm alone. But I'm really not, because God is right there with me, and for now, my job is simply to be content in him. He can handle the rest.