Last Thursday I woke up reminiscing about what in retrospect surely seems like unalloyed happiness. It was as if I had been transported to a time in my life when my mother was still alive and I was not weighed down by all that burdens an adult – even one who lives in the one-thirds world; even one who is blessed with health and strength; even one who enjoys the love of a godly husband; What is it about my childhood that fostered a sense of being unfettered in spite of worries? I did worry even as a child. Images of my father being wheeled on a stretcher into the hospital are as vivid to me now as it was when I was four years old. I had allowed myself to imagine all the worst that could happen to me. Yet there was something back then that loosened my anxiety and despondency.
What is it about us adults that we so allow ourselves to be gripped by anxious rumination that it clouds our very vision causing a lack of ability to see past our worries? We are anxious about “what we will eat or drink; or about our body, what we will wear.” We worry about the future – what is to become of us when we are old and grey? We worry about paying bills; we worry about raising children in a dangerous world. There are times when we even peer outside our world and cannot help but be deeply concerned about all that is amiss in the world at large. We see people being torn apart by brutal violence. And we are consumed by fear and worry. We cannot be loosened from these cords that so bind us.
My father says that circumstances have remained the same. There have been “fighting and fears within and without”. And my cousin agrees that while “life as it happens out there, generally speaking, is pretty much the same since the beginning of time,” she also adds, “life as it happens to us is constantly changing.” It is as if we view life through different lenses. As children we were either free of care or we had the capacity to quickly move on to more encouraging and less fearful thoughts.
Even as a child, it was not something that had loosened my anxiety; it was Someone. This Someone is none other than the Lord, who was there when I was a child; is here even now and will be there till the very last breath escapes my lips. His mercy and compassion “will aye endure.” When faced with daunting fears we can only stretch out our hands and cling to the One who is compassionate and able to still our troubled minds with hopeful assurance. He who was there in our childhood is here present in our today and will be with us always. May we have the grace to trust Him more.
