Our pastor has recently been challenging us with a series he been doing regarding “Groundhog Day Christianity”. He has a knack, our pastor, for giving sermons that manage to somehow apply almost every time he preaches. Today, however, as I sat and listened at home (baby was sick, so I stayed home with her), I found a particular area I need to address.

This morning, after we did a quick service project for the boy scouts, we were walking back to our cars. I had stopped the stroller behind the van to unload the baby, and pack up the stroller. Peeps, our 12 year old, unstrapped the baby from the stroller and picked her up, and then went to walk around me at the back of the van to put the baby in her car seat on the other side. Unfortunately, as many 12-year-olds do, he just wasn’t paying attention. As he went to step past me, he didn’t look, and there was an SUV passing by behind me that, had my husband not been quick to react in yelling and pushing Eric back, would have hit both the baby and Eric. Hubs didn’t think it was speeding, but in the replay in my head, the SUV WAS going faster than it should have been.

Hubs sat Peeps down at the back of the van as I took the baby and strapped her in to her carseat. And then I took a moment and had a small emotional breakdown. Peeps came over to apologize, but as I stood there praying, thanking God for protecting them, and trying to get the image of what could have happened, Hubs came over and hugged on me, and the tears poured out. All I could see was the mental image of what COULD HAVE HAPPENED.

We got into our cars, and drove home. The entire way, I tried to put it behind me. But I couldn’t. I got more and more sick to my stomach as I drove. The more I thought about it, the more I worried about it, the more I built up that mental picture in my head, the worse off I was.

After I got home, Hubs urged me to just go back and take a moment – to give it all up to God. And it annoyed me. What was I supposed to give up? My baby and our son had nearly been killed, and I was dealing with that – what was God supposed to do about it? But the truth is, it was the worry I was wallowing in that I needed to get rid of.

I will be the first to admit, I’m a worrier. I worry about EVERYTHING. Literally. Our life is such that there IS plenty to worry about, if I really want to spend my time doing that. I know there are plenty of areas in my life that I need to give up to God. Consciously, I have tried to do that. But the worrying…it’s a habit, I guess, and I slip into that on nearly a daily basis.

I was challenged, as I listened to today’s sermon, to give that up. Matthew 6:25-34 tells me what my God thinks of my worrying. It’s actually indulgent and self-serving of me to waste my time on such things, and yet, that’s what my “fleash” leads me to do every day.

Our pastor was talking about one of our church members who gave up smoking. He talked about how the flesh, daily, will seek to fill that urge…how the flesh wants that cigarette. But he also talked about how, when we are living in Jesus, Jesus gets us past that.

So that is my task. Now ironically, my first thought, on understanding that I need to stop worrying and start trusting God…”What if I can’t do it???” “What if I can’t quit worrying about everything?”

I know I can do it, because it’s not me doing it. It’s Jesus. It’s a hard habit, that I probably couldn’t do on my own.

But I’m not on my own anymore.