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ANXIETY
A condition of apprehension in varying degrees, resulting from imaging the worst
" ........ Who of you by worrying can add a single hour to his life?" Matthew 6:27 (NIV)
THE ANXIETY OF BEING HUMAN
We will call him Tom Renick. He was sixty years old when he first came for counseling. Retired, but not a planned retirement. He looked eighty, and a weary eighty at that. "I don't know what to do," were his first words. "I no longer have a job. 1 was doing well, very well, and then in a business reoganization 1 was fired. 1 haven't been any good since. 1 was a top salesman, and now ... 1 couldn't sell a dollar bill for fifty cents."
He told me of his father dying when he was only eight, and of a loving mother who shielded him the rest of his childhood and adolescent years from all pain and hardships. "I never climbed trees, or learned to swim. 1 never played any sports," he said. "Mother was always afraid." He went on to explain that whenever problems arose, his mother was there to solve them.
As he talked, because he was not a stupid man, he began to see how he had spent a lifetime expecting to be cared for. First by his mother, later by friends, family, then his business associates and finally by God.
While it is healthy to expect love, compassion, and concern from others,it is even more helpful if we can be standing on our own two feet when we accept them.
Was yesterday a success? Good. Be thankful! Was it a failure? Unfortunate. Learn from it! Will next week be busy, too busy, and you are worn out just thinking about it? Then don't think about it. Save your energy for doing, don't waste it by worrying.
I will not tell you I never worry. I may plan right down to the finest point and still feel concern, but I will tell you this; every ounce of worry, once I have done all I can, is a pound of foolishness.
It is not easy to turn anxieties from liabilities into assets. They have a tendency to compound themselves into nervousness and neurosis. There is a thin line between those who have conquered life or been conquered by it.
What then to do? Practical, pointed and for the sake of review.
1. Have a good physical each year. Don't fight imaginary diseases. Do fight them when they are real. The number of people who refuse to go to a doctor for fear of finding out the truth is as great as the hypochondriacs who camp on their doorsteps.
2. Take a good spiritual inventory. What you believe. What you doubt. What you do to feed your soul. What you do to make it sick.
3. Get a good purpose in life. Without it you spend your life heating but never cooking anything. And it lets you see beyond a momentary pain, making you able to bear a burden even if you know it is now yours for life.
4. When you have done all you can in every way you know to solve a problem or a pain, don't beat your head bloody and your soul ragged continuing after the impossible.
5. Believe that when one door is closed it does not mean all doors are closed. All of us have moments we thought were our worst, and they turned out to be our best. Problems can give us understanding. Problems can give us insights.
6. See life through, whether it is good or bad. Let your mantra be, "Things may get rough sometimes, but I never quit."
7. Make many friends and forgive enemies.
8. A suggestion. When concern about yourself overwhelms you, start being concerned about someone else. Your mind is not capable of worrying about two or more people at once. Therefore, if you forget yourself while caring about someone else you will automatically feel better.
9. Be a person who can say, "My goal is what counts. Obstacles may slow me down, but only death will stop me. And then I am fulfilled because I did not quit." So live well, die brave.
Old age does not automatically bring maturity, sainthood and sweetness. The anxiety of being human is that from which no one entirely escapes.
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