The drop-off for preschool is one of the hardest 35 seconds of my day. The leg grip, the little teary eyes that are saying “don’t leave me, momma,” the tug on my heart, and then the tears I try to hold in myself to put on my brave face. And then the end of the day (really of the 3 hours) rolls around, and I have the happiest little preschooler to pick up and take home. I hear stories about her day – the art she created, the friends she played with, the silly things that made her giggle, if she finished her snack, what she did at recess, and so on. She’s a different kid than those 35 seconds of fear and anxiety in the morning.
But isn’t adulthood anxiety and fear a lot like that? Maybe you don’t experience a 35-second meltdown every time you get to the door of your job (totally not judging if you do). But don’t we often let anxious thoughts take over our minds? We convince ourselves that we must do it all on our own and that we are failures if we don’t. We convince ourselves that we are weak if we have to ask for help. We convince ourselves that fear is just something we must live with. But it’s not. God doesn’t call us into a world of anxiety. It’s ok to have questions and doubts and to turn to God. But we can’t rely on this world to get us through those challenging drop-off-like moments of life.
Will you pray this prayer with me?
Dear Jesus, Please help me to not worry about anything; instead, pray about everything. Thank you for being a constant in my life, when everything else feels like it’s spiraling around me. Allow me to experience Your peace, which exceeds anything I can understand. Allow Your peace to guard my heart. It is in Your name, I pray. Amen.