A Little Something About Worry

“Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own.” Matthew 6:34

I’m usually a pretty easy-going person. Even though I plan and try to prepare for things (I am an Eagle Scout after all), the above verse became more significant to me a couple weeks ago. About two weeks ago at 4am I was awaken by a large, thundering sound. Everything outside was covered in ice and since 9:30pm that night tree branches and power lines had been falling. The sound of thunder that jolted me away from my peaceful slumber was the sound of part of a tree falling and landing outside. The tree landed right in front of the house and part of it was lying on my car. We could barely open the front door. Taking my Mag Lite, I went outside and investigated the car. It didn’t look like any of the windows were damaged, but I did see that some power lines were entangled with the tree. I came back into the house and crawled under the covers and went back to sleep.

In the morning we went outside and accessed as much of the damage as we could. In falling down, not only did the tree knock some electric lines down, it also ripped the phone box out of the side of the house. I really couldn’t see how damaged the car was because the tree was lying on top of it. I needed to see how bad things were because that car is my only form of transportation. We had some people who could cut the tree, but they were going to touch it until the power lines were out of the way. The phone company was also contacted, but they said they couldn’t do anything until the tree was moved. So, everything depended upon the power company coming and getting the line off the top of the car and out of the tree limbs. They had already been called at 4:30am when the ginormous piece of lumber first fell. I called them later that evening just to make sure.

Two days later I was still in the same predicament. The electric company was called again and I was told that crews were on the way and everything was being done as quickly as it could. It was frustrating because I had cleared all the debris I could and there really wasn’t anything else I could do. Living without electricity was challenging, but was something that could be dealt with. But we couldn’t move the power line ourselves and we couldn’t do anything else until that was taken care of. It wouldn’t be until a total of 4, almost 5 days had past before some people from the electric company came and moved the wires. Electricity wasn’t restored until a day after that (though I know some places went a total of 10 days without).

In that time, the verse from Matt. 6:34 became a very real and tangible part of my life. It would have been so easy just to get upset and mad about everything, but I didn’t. There was enough in each day itself to do that I couldn’t worry about tomorrow. I tried to live the days moment by moment. After doing everything that could be done and waiting for electricity return, I did have a sense of calm I had not expected. Sure it was frustrating at times, but the justifiable anger and rage that I could have felt, I did not. There was enough trouble in just trying to stay warm and keep busy without worrying about things I had no control over. It might not be easy to do, but taking things moment by moment and day by day sure beats incessantly worrying about things beyond your control.