I’m a worrier.

When I think about the defining characteristics of my personality, it’s obvious that one of the most significant is my worrying. I like to reframe it as contingency planning, but that’s not really accurate. One of my strengths is my ability to consider the different possible outcomes of various situations and then create possible action plans to deal with them. But I don’t stop there, I often dip into worrying about the possible negative outcomes. Sometimes to distraction.

I’m sure I come by this worrying genetically. When I was in my early teens, my family went on a driving vacation throughout the Western United States. At one of the numerous curio shops where we stopped, we found and purchased a worry stone for my grandmother. It was an onyx oval with a small depression where she could rub her thumb back and forth. At the same time, I got one for myself. When my grandmother died, her worry stone was given to me. Comparing her stone and mine, I discovered that she’d worn away about half the depressed area of the onyx. With just her thumb she’d rubbed that onyx enough to wear it down! That’s industrial strength worrying right there!

As the years have gone by, I’ve tried to get my worry under control. I’ve made a concerted effort to do contingency planning and then leave it alone. But honestly, it’s a daily struggle for me. Let’s face it, I’ve got eight active kids strewn across the Western Hemisphere. They are constantly doing things the might create problems for them. And when problems to arise, I’m the first one to get the call. So some amount of worry is justified on my part. On the other hand, my worry usually solely suffices in draining my energy.

So this weekend, when I saw this quote from Corrie Ten Boom, I found a reason to stop worrying. Or at least to keep my worrying to a more reasonable level.

If you’re a worrier this might be something to think about to help you stop too!