The Value of Worry

   Someone, somewhere has said "If you are not worried, you just don't know all the things that are going on all around you", or something like that.

   Yet the Psalmist stated in the very beginning of this well-known verse from a popular psalm, one in my reading this morning:

   "The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want."

   The other evening, Thursday it was, as I lay down to sleep on our last night of our 11 night cruise into the warm waters of the Caribbean, I began to think of all the things that could go wrong on the next day, Friday, the day that we were to leave the big boat and drive home to St. Simons.

   Now I am not a worrier by nature, and I don't think that I was all that worried, after all I managed to drop right off to sleep and did sleep soundly till morning came, but my thoughts were definitely on what might happen on that next day.

   We might not get the pre-arranged wake up call so that we could be in place at the right time to get off the ship.

   Our bags, which had been placed out in the hall before going to bed, might just not get to the right place so that we could get them as we exited the ship.

   The wheelchair that I had arranged for Mayre so that she would not have to make the long walk from the ship to the port, and on through the maze of the custom's authority, and on to the curb where we were to see our transportation back to the motel where we had left our car, just might not materialize.

   How would I manage a wheelchair, three large bags of stuff, a book bag with all our valuables, and my camera case, all through customs?

   The transportation may not have been there for us.

   Our car might be missing and then we had a real problem.

   But you know what?

   We woke up before the wake up call could ring.

   Our bags were sitting right in space 53, where they were supposed to be.

   The wheelchair was ready and even was handled by a ship's crewman, and he even took us all the way around all the lines of people, into an area of the port, where he handed us off to a port authority person, who took us to the baggage claim area, where we found our three bags in the right spot, and then also bypassed the next longer line through customs, on out to the front of the building.

   Not only that but he also secured a porter for the three bags who followed us through customs and out the front door and across the street where…

   The van from the transportation company was waiting, where the driver loaded our bags and took us to the motel where our car was sitting in the same parking spot, ready to go.

   So, I sit here, on a cool Saturday morning, in my own home, in my own room, on my own couch, and I wonder:

   "What is the value of worry anyway?"

   And I read again:

   "The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want."

   Why in the world did my mind want to dwell on all those negative thoughts?

   I should have gone straight back to my well-known saying:

   "It will all work out"

   As it was supposed to…

   And Did