Joy Killer

Worry.

Is there anyone on this earth who doesn’t know that word inside and out? I am personally very familiar with this highway robber or should I say joy killer.

In my short forty-eight years on this earth, I have learned something: most of what I WORRY about never came TRUE.

 

 

When the kids were younger, and we were educating them at home, do you want to know what I worried about most? That they wouldn’t know how to play basketball or volleyball. Is that not the dumbest thing you ever heard?

Homeschoolers are good at making fun of themselves. When one of the kids misspells a word, I joke, “You were homeschooled.”

So why did I worry about the kids playing sports? Since I grew up a church kid, I knew Friday nights were spent at youth group, and that is where we played a lot of basketball and volleyball. I didn’t want the kids to feel awkward and homeschooled.

Fast forward fifteen years later and lo and behold all our kids can play both these sports well.

WHY DID I WORRY?

Because I am human. Humans want to have crystal balls we look into so we can know how our lives turn out.

We are control freaks.

People pay quite a bit of money to have their fortunes and futures read to them. Honestly, I think I could get rich doing this. Just tell people what they want to hear, and they will be back over and over again.

*You will find love

*You will come upon great wealth

*You will have a baby

*You will be famous

*You have a bright future

When I think back to when I was first married if I had gone to a fortune teller and they really could tell me my future, I may have walked out of the building and jumped off a bridge:

*You will be in an unhappy, unfulfilled marriage

*You will not sleep for twenty-five years

*You will have a child, Kyle, with severe autism

*You will homeschool for fourteen years

*You will become very sick, and your teeth will fall out.

None of these events would I have wanted at the time. I would have been driven mad with worry over knowing they were in my future.

God doesn’t tell us our future, partly because he knows we can’t handle it, but mostly because he wants us to trust him.

“Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothes? Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they? Can anyone of you by worrying add a single hour to your life?  -Matthew 6:25-27 NIV

Fortune tellers make a truckload of money off our fear and anxiety. Imagine if none of us worried about our future or our children’s futures but left each child in God’s hands.

Click here for 50 Verses On Worry

God never promises to give any of us a comfy cozy life. But he promises to walk with us through our darkest times.

Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I fear no evil, for You are with me; Your rod and Your staff, they comfort me. You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies; You have anointed my head with oil; my cup overflows. Surely goodness and lovingkindness will follow me all the days of my life, and I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever.”
—Psalm 23: 4-6

I went through many dark years, and I actually got to the point where I questioned God and asked him where he was in my life. DID HE EVEN CARE? I think I added a few nasty words to my shouting along with my shaking fists. He pointed me to this poem during that time:

Footprints In The Sand

One night I dreamed a dream.
As I was walking along the beach with my Lord.
Across the dark sky flashed scenes from my life.
For each scene, I noticed two sets of footprints in the sand,
One belonging to me and one to my Lord.

After the last scene of my life flashed before me,
I looked back at the footprints in the sand.
I noticed that at many times along the path of my life,
especially at the very lowest and saddest times,
there was only one set of footprints.

This really troubled me, so I asked the Lord about it.
“Lord, you said once I decided to follow you,
You’d walk with me all the way.
But I noticed that during the saddest and most troublesome times of my life,
there was only one set of footprints.
I don’t understand why, when I needed You the most, You would leave me.”

He whispered, “My precious child, I love you and will never leave you
Never, ever, during your trials and testings.
When you saw only one set of footprints,
It was then that I carried you.”

🌷

God restored my marriage, helped me homeschool four children, gave me a fantastic dentist, and improved my son Kyle’s health tremendously, which also caused me to sleep.

But he is still teaching me about trusting him, and I am learning it through my daughter-in-law Jazmin, whom I love dearly.

Our son Eythan married Jazmin this summer. Jazmin has stage four cancer. I have learned so much from Jazmin about God. She lives every day with a disease that kills people every second.

There are good days and terrible days with this disease. Somedays Jazmin is full of energy and on top of the world. Other days she is on the couch while her body battles with this killer to win the war it has waged against her body.

Since their wedding in August, she and Eythan have been on a crazy adventure between Canada and the USA where she gets her cancer treatment. They have not lived on their own yet. They have lived with her parents Sherie and Aaron in Sudbury, with us in Sault Ste Marie, and with the Katzenbacks in Arizona (Thank you, Charlene and Jason💗).

They did have an apartment for a few days before their honeymoon, but in the blink of an eye, God changed their life plans. He hasn’t given them the royal life, they are living more like gypsies, never really knowing what is going to happen next.

Jazmin was talking about this yesterday. We were discussing having a purpose in life and how right now her goal is to just work at getting healthy and being married. Her dreams are on hold for now. She doesn’t get to look into the crystal ball and see the ending.

One thing I have come to value in Jazmin is her honesty. She doesn’t pretend to have it all together, all the time. She shared how her mom, Sherie, told her it’s okay to have bad days.  Sherie is such a good mother and is precisely the mother Jazmin needed for this battle.

Sometimes cancer patients feel they have to be strong, ALL THE TIME.

You know, fight the good fight. 

There are days when a cancer patient just needs to have a good cry, the battle is fierce and seems endless.

What do I see in Jazmin: a loving wife, a fur baby mom who is terrific, a lovely daughter and a devoted friend. A young woman with great purpose who has an incredible trust in God and walks daily wanting to glorify him in her journey.

If anyone has earned a right to worry, it’s a cancer patient. Yet Jazmin has a strong desire to place her life in God’s hands, and trust him with her years ahead and her future. There are days she worries, yet she keeps coming back to trusting Jesus.

“Why are you downcast, O my soul? Why so disturbed within me? Put your hope in God, for I will yet praise Him, my Savior and my God.”
—Psalm 42:5

If Jazmin can trust God, you can too! You may still worry from time to time but keep focusing on God and his promises.

“To trust God in the light is nothing, but trust him in the dark—that is faith.”-Charles Spurgeon

Do you have a life filled with worry and anxiety? Are you carrying a burden you feel has become too heavy to bear? God is calling your name. He wants you to cast all your worries at his feet and allow him to take the fears that steal your joy.

God cares about you💗

“Do not be anxious about anything, 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 your minds in Christ Jesus.”
—Philippians 4:6-7