The Doors – Worry
Worry is like being in a room with ten shut doors facing you. These doors represent all the possibilities of what you think might happen in the future about a particular situation that consumes you. Since the future is not yours to know, you don’t actually know which door you will walk through eventually. But there will come a time, soon, when one door will be opened and you will have to walk through it, even a door you hadn’t thought of yet.
In the meantime, the ‘not knowing’ part is very hard. It is consuming you, so you decide to go over to take a peak behind the first door which is labeled ‘Worst case scenario door #1’. You try it and it opens, so you walk through that door and down its virtual path, playing out what could happen if you were to later enter this door. You experience in your mind one ‘what if’ after the other. As you do, you become more anxious and even weep at the sad events and final ending of this path. This traumatizes you so much that you rush back to the waiting room and shut that door. You are shaken. How could this possibly happen to you? Maybe it won’t, because there are still 9 other doors left of possibilities.
You wait. But the waiting is killing you so you creep over to ‘worst case scenario door # 2’, open it and walk down its virtual path. Again you play out all that could happen down this path, with each situation more horrible than the last and in a panic you rush back to the waiting room, slamming the door as you go. By now, your breathing is heavy and you are in a sweat. You are anything but relaxed and at peace. But will you stop there? No. There are now 8 more doors left, all tantalizing you with their possibilities of your supposed future. Will you leave the future to God? No, because He doesn’t seem to be taking an active role in your potential crisis and the ‘not knowing’ part is killing you. So, you again take matters into your own hand and open the rest of the doors, one by one and virtually experience all their ever increasing stories of gloom and destruction. At the end you are exhausted. Because of opening all those doors, you are now an anxiety ridden individual and no more the wiser in knowing what will actually be coming to you.
So, the question that needs to be asked is: ‘Why do you do this to yourself?’
You may reason, “Well, I need to be mentally prepared for any scenario that might happen, so I might as well know my options.” But what good has all this done you? By the time you had reached the tenth door you were thoroughly exhausted and worn out. So how can you fight the real battle if you have already worn yourself out by fighting the imaginary ones?
Consider this. When you walked through those doors, God was not with you, because He only gives grace and strength for real situations, not imaginary ones. By opening each door, you were walking down their virtual path on your own strength and getting beaten up emotionally in the process. None of those paths were real, they were only imagined since the future is not yours to determine but God’s.
The way to solve your dilemma of the future is this. When you are in the waiting room of the present, ask yourself this: “Right here, in this room, has God taken care of me up to this point?” The answer will be ‘yes’. You are ok right now in the present with Him. You’re alive, aren’t you? You’re a child of God with His help, aren’t you? But, you say, “What about those doors? Which one will I go through? I have to know!” Actually, you don’t have to know. You can just rest in knowing that when the future becomes the present, God will open a door and it could even be a new one that you hadn’t counted on. But whatever door He opens, He will then take your hand and walk through that door with you and you will be given all the strength and grace you need to walk that path with Him one step at a time. He promises that. It will be manageable because you will not be alone. For the real paths, He promises: “I will never leave you nor forsake you” (Heb.13:5).
But you might ask, “What about planning for the future?” That is true, but there is a big difference between planning and worrying. In planning, you look up to God andask Him what you can do since He sees where you can’t. You present things to Him, and in doing so you shift the burden of what could happen onto His broad shoulders. You then thank Him for taking it, and then you wait for an answer. He will guide you with wisdom in how to prepare, and you will give Him your confidence in return. In all this, you are always looking up, and not down the sideways paths that you were never meant to travel. The one is preparation, the other is worry. You will know the difference by whether you feel peace or anxiety, whether your burden is heavy or light.
Remember, God gives grace for what is real. The present is your sphere of responsibility, and in it you will hold His hand. This makes your responsibility very simple and your burden light. The future is God’s. He has it under control. That heavy burden is on Him.
So the solution to worry is to keep your hands off the door knobs and to look up and rest.
“You will keep him in perfect peace, whose mind is stayed on You, because he trusts in You. Trust in the Lord forever, for in Yah, the Lord, is everlasting strength” (Isaiah 26:3,4).
“Be anxious for nothing, but in everything by prayer and supplication, with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known to God;’ and the peace of God. which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus (Philippians 4:6,7).