"No one can serve two masters; for a slave will either hate the one and love the other, or be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and wealth. “Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing? Look at the birds of the air; they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they? And can any of you by worrying add a single hour to your span of life? And why do you worry about clothing? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they neither toil nor spin, yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not clothed like one of these. But if God so clothes the grass of the field, which is alive today and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will he not much more clothe you—you of little faith? Therefore do not worry, saying, ‘What will we eat?’ or ‘What will we drink?’ or ‘What will we wear?’ For it is the Gentiles who strive for all these things; and indeed your heavenly Father knows that you need all these things. But strive first for the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well. “So do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will bring worries of its own. Today’s trouble is enough for today. Matthew 6:24-34

What do we do with our worries? Do we try to manage them by thinking them over and over and over? Or do we hand them over, surrendering our lives to the mystery that is beyond us? Maybe, we dance back and forth between them. Personally, I like to do a little managing first, then maybe, I will hand them over. It takes a lot for me to surrender, and sometimes, I need to be knocked down to do it. And, I was...literally. I fell on Friday night, my chin right into the asphalt. After a trip to the urgent care, I wound up with five stitches and two broken molars. What kind of wake-up call was this?

As I got comfy in my bed, I opened the Bible to this passage from Matthew. And, let me say, God, do I worry. And God, do I see the people around me worry. We worry about things like relationships with others, money, and loneliness. For me, relationships are the biggie. I often use others as security. As I sat at my kitchen table with a friend, wondering why I do this, I realized that I have never felt safe in my family life. Yes, growing up, I had a home, clothing, more than enough materially. But emotionally, it consisted mostly, of a vacant house. Because I didn't feel safe at home, as a child, I needed to create some safety outside of myself. And I did, through my friends. I began at age five, organizing a summer camp for the kids in my neighborhood. I came up with all of the camp activities, like digging in my sandbox and mixing Country Time lemonade in my garage. Not only did I organize groups of people around me, I led them. I was bossy and I liked it my way. I still do, a lot of the time. I would always get to be the priest when my friend and I would pretend to hold Catholic mass. We made our holy communion out of Wonder bread, pinching it together between our fingers, into small circles. I loved being the priest. My first five-year old encounter with power.

And even today, as a grown woman, I have placed my security outside of myself.  Striving for this sure thing that is out there, whatever it is, rather than towards God, leads me to a dead end. To hand my life over to God feels like death to me, a lot. I worry, if I don't have my little hands in everything, I may not get what I want. Then, what would I do.  This could range from having someone else pick a restaurant I don't want to go to, or to not knowing if someone I love is safe tonight. Surrendering my worries to God is not an act of passivity. It feels like pure agony to me, truly. Surrendering to God, means surrendering to a creative life force within, that knows my heart better than I ever could. Settling into a  Love that knows what is best for me. I long to trust like the lilies of the field. I really do. I long to sink so deeply into this surrender that I don't mind getting lost for a while. In fact, I think lost might be where it is at for me, right now. Traveling new terrain means getting lost every now and then.  But, God does it feel scary to be lost sometimes.

In times like these, where scarcity seems to be the word, it is easy to want to manage our worries. But, I want to be a lily, who every spring pushes up from the Earth, blossoms anew every summer and dies off in the fall and winter. What an act of surrender. That little lily, just giving in, to the flow of life. Could I surrender that deeply? Could I trust that much, particularly like the seed does when it is buried in the deep, dark soil?