What, Me Worry?

What are you most worried about for the future?

Let’s hear it for the GenX folks who grew up on Mad Magazine? How did I get to read a lot of it when I wasn’t even allowed? Shout out to my uncles (my mom’s brothers who were only six and eleven years older than me) who left theirs lying around. They also let me hang around while they watched stuff like The Blue Lagoon and Zapped on Betamax. They also let me play their Game N Watch and Atari.

Even if the ‘80s feels like it was only yesterday, it’s actually 30-40 years ago. And the absolute kicker in this acknowledgment is that I must now be pushing 50.

The worries of the ‘80s are a far cry from the worries of today, both in the general sense and personal sense. Now, I’m a born worrier. I worry things to their last nerve, to their very bone. I tend to feel like things will fall apart if I don’t worry enough. Try being that way and growing up in the Christian faith wherein worrying is considered a sin. Is it any wonder that I was such a basket case in my youth?

But it has been ages since I could get away with immaturity. It may rarely feel like it, but life has been weathering me and seasoning me and mellowing me (like it or lump it) into this wiser, more prudent version.

I’ve had my struggles with faith, but my personal experience has revealed time and again its legitimacy and given me no other option but to cling to it. In abidance with its teachings, of course, I’m continually learning to “carry everything to God in prayer.”

Having said all that, I do have some really enormous worries about the future. I , of course, lift all my children up to God, but two of them are on the autism spectrum. I’m always praying for a miracle, but, judging their current capabilities, it’s not very likely that they would grow up to lead independent lives. My husband and I are doing what we can for them, trying to plan ahead so that they can be taken care of in case of eventualities, but nobody knows the future. No safeguard is foolproof. We can only do so much, and, even with so much effort, the most really that we can do is to entrust them to God’s loving providence and protection.

So… while the worries are there, I can still do an Alfred E. Neuman and go, “What, me worry?“ because I’ve been extended that privilege of peace of mind as long as I choose to surrender them all to God.