Advice on Worry

I had a wedding to perform last weekend so I had to get a haircut last week.  I really like my hairstylist -- she's a single mom who goes to the Lutheran Church near my house.  She's finishing up on my hair when she asks me for my opinion on something.  I almost told her I was on a sabbatical and I don't have any opnions.  But fortunately I don't always say what I'm thinking and besides... I always seem to have an opinion.

She confessed to me that she is a worrier and when her young daughter was struggling with a heart condition this spring, her worry went off the charts and straight to her stomach.  The doctor says that she needs to stop worrying so her stomach can stop bleeding.  He prescribed an anti-anxiety drug.  Now she feels guilty for taking a drug because she is a worrier.  She doesn't feel much like the good Christian she really wants to be.  She wanted my opinion on her condition.

That's when I told her I was on a sabbatical -- NO, NO, NO I didn't say that! 

I told her that she had a physiological problem and that it's OK to seek a physiological solution to a physiological problem.  She needed to get her stomach right and if the anti-anxiety medicine helped do that, take the meds.  I told her sometimes we think in terms of either/or instead of both/and.  Worry is one of those both/and deals.  She had a physical problem that was caused by her worry.  Did God want to use her problem to grow her faith and help her worry less?  Absolutely!  I told her that while she was taking her meds she also needed to lean into her faith and ask God to grow in grace so that she would worry less and trust Him more.  I assured her that she is still a work in progress just like I was.  My hunch is that if she lets God help her, chances are she won't need to be as dependent on the meds for very long.

I think she was just relieved that I didn't condemn her.  I gave her a generous tip and said, "If the meds don't work, try taking a sabbatical!"  Well, I left a generous tip, anyhow!

God, help  my hair stylist and the rest of us to worry less and trust you more!  AMEN