A Prayer For What You Don’t Want
Does worrying keep us focused on the negative?
There’s a lot of change going on in my life at the moment. Big changes. So much of this can be overwhelming, but it’s all movement forward to a new chapter. There are a lot of variables, winds of change that could blow for or against me. It would be so easy to worry about all of those variables.
I know how that feels, to feel worry about what could happen, anxiety for things being out of my control. Taking that a step further I’ve been really excellent at turning that worry and anxiety into self doubt and criticism for all the ways I wasn’t doing it right or doing enough.
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Talking with a close friend the other day I noted that I’m not falling into those patterns. The “what if’s” and “shoulda -woulda -coulda” thinking isn’t where I dwell.
Perhaps it’s getting older. Being able to look back over many… many decades gives me a perspective on how those things have worked in the past. Honestly they didn’t work, they blocked my mind and my heart with negative energy and blocked the positive.
Perhaps it’s being exposed to the philosophy and self talk related to recovery fellowship. There I’ve learned to see what I’m responsible for and what’s beyond my control (which is pretty much everything beyond my own self.)
Perhaps it’s in my training in holding space for people in transition, loss, and grief. Recognizing the comfort I have around death and loss has allowed me to train and hone those skills. The calm that I feel I can bring into the situation, allowing those I serve as a doula to draw on that calm. I also see the strength in what I can’t control. Coming into the room empty and without any goal of fixing things or telling folks what and how to do things is where being a doula starts.
“Worry is a prayer for something you Don’t Want.” That’s one of my favorite phrases. When I am in anxiety and worrying about the unknown, about the future, about whether choices I’ve made will turn out well or bring disaster, that’s OK. The power is in choosing. I can choose to keep worrying, to even spiral into a melt down. But there is life beyond worrying and fear, and the choice to set it aside - and know I can always pick that shit up again (and probably will) - is where the other side of worry lives.
What are you worrying about? Like so many people is it the unknown future and the feeling that death is lurking there somewhere? What keeps you awake at night? Are you praying for something you Don’t Want? I’d like to hear about that and what you think setting worry aside for a bit might look like. How could our days play out differently without the worrying?