“Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own.”
“Can any one of you by worrying add a single hour to your life?”
—Matthew 6:34 & 6:27
I’m tempted to say I come from a long line of worriers, but honestly, I only know it goes back to my father. He was born in 1918, coming of age during the great hardships of the Great Depression.
Whenever I describe my father, I picture someone horribly burned as a child—so scarred that people might look away. But his scars weren’t visible; they showed in how he braced himself for life, approaching each day like a burn victim eyeing a flame: always wary, always expecting pain. Every time we went out of town to visit my grandmother, my father would shut off the gas to the water heater—just in case, to avoid a potential fire or explosion. It was a small act, but it spoke volumes about the shadow those old burns cast over his life.
Looking back, I often wonder if I’ve inherited those scars in my own way. Teaching personal finance to high schoolers, I’d often tell students that credit lets you spend tomorrow’s income today—but worry does much the same, borrowing peace from the future to pay for anxieties in the present.
My work with gifted students taught me that intelligence, while a gift, often brings quick worries. I’ve often been called smart—and I’ve lived through long spells of both anxiety and depression.
In one of those trainings, I first heard the term catastrophizing—the habit of jumping from a small setback to imagining the worst-case scenario and living as if disaster is inevitable.
Hearing the instructor, a thousand puzzle pieces clicked into place. I realized I was gifted not just in academics but in inventing catastrophe after catastrophe and carrying those imagined disasters day after day. In my early years of teaching, I made mistakes like everyone does, but to me, each one felt like it threatened to end my career before it began.
It’s not only personal experience—research backs it up. In a recent study, people wrote down their daily fears and checked back 20 days later. Over 94% of the things they worried about never happened, and most of the few that did weren’t so bad after all.
Living a life of worry is not what God wants for us. It comes when we listen to the old serpent from the garden whispering: “Did God really say he was going to take care of you?”
The truth is, again and again, the Bible declares God’s promise: He will never leave us nor forsake us. His love is enduring and His goodness sure.
So today, let’s leave tomorrow to God, and walk in the grace He gives for each day.
. . . and that’s what I know today.