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"Therefore I tell you, do not be anxious about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, nor about your body, what you will put on. ...And which of you by being anxious can add a single hour to his span of life ...or a single cubit to his stature?” Matthew 6:25-27
Falling in and out of several dreams does not make for restful sleep. Somehow in the flash of dreams and characters and unfitting scenes, all of the fabricated and half truths melted into one shifting timeline moments before my alarm sounded. A house never visited nestled in country quiet, dark and bare... a crumbling staircase, the first starting nine feet off the ground... the new tattoo on my arm, a symbol and reminder of hope and perseverance, skin tattered and worn... a cousin with a different face, a friend familiar I’ve never known, a plot undiscoverable, I’m just running somewhere either to or from, chasing or escaping, but definitely running. I’m breathing heavy, eyes closed, in another world where things may be more actual than when I wake eyes opened. I woke tired. And worried.
There’s plenty in life that does not make complete sense to me in the current. Much to leave to worry and thieving nights. Distance, that is what we worry about. Where our feet stand and where we should be or want to be or need to be, that is the distance. The money we have and the money we need gives room for more worry about our job and our future and our family and our happiness, our goals and expectations. And then worry really opens the box.
What about us, who we really are? Am I enough? The weight and value of my existence, do they matter? Do I matter?
Worry is a descending staircase unending into the darkness of doubt. The more worry, the less faith. Moments wasted. Worry the culprit. We, the worrier, not the lifeless activity of worrying, but our engagement and giving in to it. In worry we waste minutes, hours, whole days and weeks. All moments given us to live and discover, to succeed and fail and succeed, to make a path and leave a mark on the years and patch of earth we dwell.
With ease we run in circles carving deeper lines of worry about everything and anything, our faith diminishing while life keeps a straight line.
Life is filled with unresolve, unfigurable, breaks and pauses and yet to be determined occasions. There is so much to worry about especially when we must wait, cannot see or even imagine an outcome better than worse. But there is faith and trust and living with eyes closed.
Morning begins me already sunk deep in worry. How are the kids, really? Will we be happy finally? Will I get from here to there and set my feet literal in dreams hanging still? All answers ringing maybe. None more valuable than the life added in moments and occasions. Detached from the answers or resolve is hope full in each day dark and light, heavy and whole. Make no mistake, each day a gift given to be opened and lived. The next another gift all of its own to be opened and lived after in the moment given.
And so with this new day, I let go of yesterday clinging stinking of both what is and what is no more and I clinch what is given. As many times necessary, I repeat this action. In my life, it happens to be necessary very much and often.