When asked what I do best, my immediate answer is an unfortunate habit: Worry.
One should pray instead of worry, but since worrying is my very special talent, I must admit that I’ve honed and perfected it for many years.
As a wife and mother, I know I am not alone.
Time of worry
Recently I put my talent to good use when I had to drive my husband to the emergency room for chest pains. With my fingers clenched around the steering wheel, my knuckles shone white as we sped down the road.
My husband, looking up a map to the hospital for me on his phone in case he fainted on our way there, noticed my frenzied driving.
“Calm down!” he urged me. “We’re just going to the ER!”
I knew he was trying to diffuse my worry and make me laugh, even in his time of need. It worked because I knew then that he’d be alright. And in the end, praise God, he was.
In the ER, my husband, with several wires connecting him to a heart monitor, looked at me.
Although we could only see each other’s eyes over our masks, he knew I was struggling anxiously with the situation.
“Are you doing okay?” he asked.
The nurse looked at him incredulously. “It’s awfully nice of you to ask how your wife is doing when you’re the one hooked up to the heart monitor,” she said.
But that’s who my husband is: A compassionate problem-solver, not a fretful worrier.
Pray, don’t worry
Sometimes we worriers just need an unexpected jolt to remind us that we cannot control a thing with our worrying. Worry does nothing. Prayer does.
“Humble yourselves therefore under the mighty hand of God, so that he may exalt you in due time. Cast all your anxiety on him, because he cares for you” (1 Peter 5: 6-7).
I prayed hard in the ER that day, entrusting to God my worst fears and worries in a moment during which it was extremely difficult to do so. And my prayers were answered.
Later that day, as my husband and I knelt in prayers of thanksgiving at our church, I sensed God’s message loud and clear in my heart: “See? I told you to trust Me. Now you must trust Me even more in the fall.”
I will not forget that day, that message of trust, as various worries try to usurp me again and again this fall.
“Don’t spend your energies on things that generate worry, anxiety, and anguish,” said St. Padre Pio. “Only one thing is necessary: Lift up your spirit and love God.”
Striving to transform my worries into ardent prayer, I try to remember that God always saves us, God always gives us the grace we need, God always loves us, and God will never abandon us, not even when we think ourselves forsaken.
“Calm down,” I can imagine God saying to me while I try to steer, white-knuckled, through my earthly worries. “We’re just going to Heaven.”
Julianne Nornberg, mother of four children, is a member of St. John the Baptist Parish, Waunakee.