How Much?

When I get anxious I know I have gone from God’s time to my time and it’s a waste of time. Charles Stanley




Back in the “good old days” when I had epilepsy and found out 90% of my seizures were stressed caused I had a lot to learn about the affects of being anxious. One of those lessons was exactly what Charles Stanley talked about in today’s quote when he said, “When I get anxious I know I have gone from God’s time to my time and it’s a waste of time.”


Every time I got anxious about something I would have a seizure. It didn’t matter if my anxiousness was visible to the entire world around me or hidden deep down inside the seizures were evident to all. They were the best gauge to measure just how anxious I was feeling inside as I couldn’t get away with being anxious about anything. If I did I would have a seizure and the “cat was out of the bag” that I was getting away from where I needed to be.


No matter how much I would hate to admit it being anxious never got me anything but stress seizures and therefore was a total waste of time. To be perfectly honest it’s the same with everyone. They may not have stress seizures but there are plenty of things that they do that indicates their anxiousness such as a quick temper, restlessness, discontent, and impatience.


When are we ever going to learn that worrying about something that is coming up never got it to arrive any sooner? That being concerned about an event we needed to undertake never solved the task we needed to perform. In fact, instead of being a solution the act of being anxious often becomes a part of the problem. Talk about a fritter away of time!


When I got cancer one of the biggest lessons my husband and I had to learn was the fact that life was too short. It was too short to allow some of the things we were allowing to infiltrate our lives. We learned in a heartbeat, unexpected, and suddenly any of us can come down with a deadly disease such as cancer, or get in a car accident or have a heart attack and life would be over as we know it. We can get anxious all we want, we can worry all we want but nothing is going to change that and if we try we’re just squandering away our time.


God’s timing is something that needs to be trusted. It’s not something we can control. Nor is it something we can speed up or slow down. How long I was going to be sick with my disease wasn’t in my control as much as it was His. Occasionally I tried my best to pull away from God’s timing in my spirit by being anxious but God’s love and grace brought me back to where I needed to be.


Daily He would remind me that His grace was sufficient. “How long,” wasn’t the question that needed to be answered by God. It was “How much of my time did I want to waste?” to be answered by me. Well duh, none of course! On that note I was going to have to stop being anxious and start trusting God as a common sense solution to an age old problem. A problem that started as far back as Adam and Eve and one that could end with me if I would only let it. How much, Karen? How much?

© 2011 Karen J Gillett @ Pencil Marks and Recipes Publishing