Friday, February 18, 2011

Worry



As I have mentioned before, I love Flannery O’Connor. I was reading some stuff of hers today and came across a quote that I had not seen before:

“When a book leaves your hands, it belongs to God. He may use it to save a few souls or to try a few others, but I think that for the writer to worry is to take over God's business.”

I am a natural worrier. Josh says that I come up with things to worry about, which is probably true. I think that sometimes if there isn’t anything to worry about, I worry about that. I have been trying to be better about it, but I’m not very good at that.

Josh always points out that worrying doesn’t help anything. My reply to him is usually that worrying is a reaction, not an action. It’s an effect, not a cause. But that’s not strictly true, because my worrying tends to create some stressful situations between Josh and myself.

But, as the quote says, when I worry, for whatever reason, I am taking over God's business. And that's not okay. In fact, it's downright rude. It's saying that I don't trust God to handle it. It's saying that I think I can do a better job of taking care of the situation, and that is just ignorant.

So, basically, worrying turns me into a rude, ignorant busybody. Epic Worry Fail.