Dear friend,
Therefore I tell you, don’t be anxious for your life: what you will eat, or what you will drink; nor yet for your body, what you will wear. Isn’t life more than food, and the body more than clothing? See the birds of the sky, that they don’t sow, neither do they reap, nor gather into barns. Your heavenly Father feeds them. Aren’t you of much more value than they? “Which of you by being anxious, can add one moment to his lifespan?
I stood outside the pharmacy doors for ten minutes yesterday before I could make myself go in. Nothing had happened. That was almost the worst part, there was no event to point to, just my chest doing something I couldn't talk it out of. I called it a bad morning to my coworker. It was more like my whole body deciding to brace for something that wasn't there.
I keep thinking about how this shows up as a physical thing before it's ever a thought you can name. Matthew 6 has that line about the birds not sowing or reaping, and for years I read it as a tidy little nature lesson. Lately I notice something else in it, the sheer number of times worry gets named plainly, not shamed, just named, like whoever wrote this down knew exactly how the mind circles. It doesn't scold the circling. It just keeps pointing somewhere steadier than the circling.
I don't think the point was ever to stop your chest from doing the thing. What's one small steadier thing your eyes could land on today, even for thirty seconds?
A prayer
God, her body is bracing again for something she can't name. Meet her in the parking lot, in the middle of the ordinary morning, before she's found any words for it. Be steadier than the circling. Amen.