We’re two weeks in to being parents and the worries haven’t stopped. I knew deep down they wouldn’t – that they would just “transfer.” During pregnancy, I was scared of losing the baby. As we got closer to our due date, I was scared of something happening during delivery. And now that he’s here, I’m scared of SIDS, of dropping him, that he’s eating too much or too little.

In the exhaustion, in the endless checking to see if he’s still breathing at night, I find myself wanting to skip ahead to a season when I don’t have to worry about him in this way. But if there’s one thing I’ve seen, even just over the last year, it’s that while the worries may change and adapt, their existence does not. And in that harsh truth, I’ve felt the Lord telling me to stop waiting for a season without worry but rather learn how to surrender my worry in the current one. 

In Matthew 6, the Bible tells us to not worry about tomorrow because each day has enough trouble of its own. While that verse is both encouraging (don’t worry!) and discouraging (today is stressful enough!), it reminds me that there’s no point trying to just make it to the next season because new worries will be there waiting for us. And, in trying to fast forward to the next chapter, we miss out on the present one.

The reality is there won’t be a day, on this side of heaven, that we’re completely worry-free. We can let this thought paralyze us or we can use it to motivate us to put our trust in the Lord… to learn how to process the worries as they come and surrender them… to strive to embrace the joy even in the midst of worry… and to train our minds so that we can be better equipped to handle future worries.

So, while there might never be a day without worry, there also won’t ever be a day without Jesus. That’s what we must focus on and cling to.