Parenting – the hardest thing we will ever love. Nobody ever said it was easy, but everybody says it is a blessing – weariness and all.

Monday’s post referred to the weariness that moms can feel as a result of child-rearing, teenage-drama, taxi-cabbing, tantrum-taming, diaper-changing, and mess-cleaning. Weariness from trying to stand firm in your convictions, even when exhaustion is weakening your strength to persevre.  Weariness from simply being completely spent, physically and emotionally.

Yet another serious form of weariness…..is “worriness”.  Yes, I just made that word up, and in my opinion, y made-up definition would be this: “Worriness – the act of being so emotionally worried that you get spiritually weary.”

God created a mothers heart with such overwhelming compassion for her children, that it is our innate nature to worry, even when we know that the official definition of worry is not trusting God.

I think that recently God is testing my spiritual trust-o-meter.

For two years, my oldest daughter suffered mercilessly with migraines, and every single time she would be struck with one of those horrible headaches, I would worry and fret, pacing around the house wishing I could do something to ease her pain. Fortunately her headaches have stopped, but now I spend my time worrying about whether or not she will make good choices as a maturing young woman and praying that God will keep her safe everywhere she goes.

My son has been experiencing chronic back pain for a couple years, and the doctors cannot find exactly what is wrong.  And as my middle child hits full fledge teenagedom, guess what… I will probably worry!

Even though I believe with all my heart that God holds our children in His hands, and even though I have prayed countless times for God to send down an army of angels to forge a hedge of protection around them in their every day lives, my mama’s heart still worries – which is exactly why us mama’s so desperately need to remember that when mom gets weary, she can gain strength from her faith.

We need a faith that can hold us up when we are too weak to stand on our own, because our hearts are so heavy with worriness; a faith that helps us replace worry, with worship.

The truth is, that we all know worry accomplishes nothing and is an outward symbol of an inward lack of faith….. so why do we do it?

It is no secret that the Bible tells us not to worry –

Matthew 6:27 Who of you by worrying can add a single hour to his life?

Proverbs 12:25a An anxious heart weighs a man down,…

Philippians 4:6 Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God.

I can honestly say that I have learned to trust God more in the past few years than in all the years of my life, because of my walk with Him. Although my trust-o-meter still falls short time and time again, I can see within myself that my worriness is not near as bad as it used to be.

I can remember a time when I would get so worried about ‘stuff’, that I would tremble internally, and sometimes even get a sick stomach. I think I gave new meaning to the phrase “worried sick”.

Maybe you can relate to feeling that way at some point in your life. Maybe you are feeling that way today. Maybe you are so worried about your children and things going in their lives, or about things happening in your own life, that you are literally making yourself sick – maybe not just physically sick, but heart sick too.

You see, worry causes us to be heart sick. It is the opposite of trusting God, and is a tool of the enemy that causes us to focus on the problem, instead of the problem solver.

My name is Tracie Miles, and I am a recovered worrier.

Not that I never worry, of course, because I do. I am human, and I am a mom. However, I try not to allow that worry to become so overwhelming and all consuming that I forget that God is God. Remembering God is, was and will forever be God, helps calm the worriness in my heart.

Getting to a place of trusting God takes time and faith.

It takes an act of allowing God to replace your worry, with faith, and that faith leads to unshakable trust, and trusting God is a much better use of our time than worrying.

So where would you rank your trust-o-meter today, on a scale of 1 to 10, with 10 being fully trusting God, and 1 being filled with worriness?

1 Peter 5:7 Cast all your anxiety on him because he cares for you