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-talking, taxi-cabbing, tantrum-taming, diaper-changing, and mess-cleaning. Weariness from simply being completely and physically spent.

Yet another form of weariness, is worriness (I think I just made that word up!).

What is Tracie’s unofficial, unsupported definition of her newly created word?

“Worriness – the act of being so emotionally worried that you get spiritually weary.”

Hello – my name is Tracie Miles, and I am a worrier. So there. I said it.

I bet a lot of you mothers and grandmothers out there are saying “me too!me too!”

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 simply – not trusting God.

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

For the past two days I have watched my oldest child suffer mercilessly from migraine headaches – a problem which we have been dealing with for over two years, and every time shet gets one of these headaches, I worry.

My youngest child has been experiencing chronic back pain which has been relentless for over a year. This morning we will receive the results of his MRI, and I worry.

Fortunately, my middle child has no health problems at the moment, except a few bumps and bruises from cheerleading! But Im sure the time will come, when I will find reason to 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 a faith that is stronger than obsessive worriness.

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

We need a faith that helps us replace worry, with worship – and allows our trust-o-meter to sky rocket, instead of plummet, when faced with the unknown.

Yesterday, I posted a short sentence as my Facebook status, simply saying that I wished there were more than 24 hours in a day. No matter how hard I try to manage my time, I can never seem to get everything done! So I found myself thinking today, as I was mentally and silently fretting over my childrens health issues, why am I wasting time worrying, when time is so precious?! I should be spending time praying instead! Duh!

The truth is, that we all know worry accomplishes nothing! 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

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