Anxiety, Lilies, and staying connected

 

Rev. Molly F. James, PhD

DFMS Noonday Prayer via Zoom

May 12, 2021

Psalm 119:97-120; Baruch 3:24-37; Luke 12:22-31

May God’s Word be spoken. May God’s Word be heard. May that point us to the living Word who is Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.


“And can any of you by worrying add a single hour to your span of life?” Oh my. I struggle with this passage and this line in particular. In fact, it is enough to inspire worrying about worrying. Jesus is right. Worrying doesn’t DO anything. But it is not as simple as just deciding not to worry. It does not seem to just be a switch I can turn off.

And there is so much anxiety just floating in the air right now. What are the most recent guidelines? What can I do now that I am vaccinated? What will life be like this summer? When can we travel to see family? What is it going to be like when we go back to the office? How do we keep from being on pins and needles, waiting for the other shoe to drop, waiting for things to shutdown again because of another surge? How do we know that we will be safe? How do we keep our loved ones safe?

Like all of you, I am no stranger to fear and anxiety. My most profound experience of them was in the months following the end of my chemotherapy treatments. Once I had finished them and was sent back to my “normal” life, I felt adrift. I did not know what normal was anymore. I was out of survival mode, and I finally had the emotional and mental space to begin to process the magnitude of what I had just been through. I began to really grapple with the reality of my own mortality. And I was scared. The recurring question was, “If cancer, this terrible thing I never thought could happen, did, what was there to protect me from all the other terrible things in the world?” I wanted someone to promise me that I would have a long, full life with no more tragedies in it.

Of course, no one could give me that promise. There are no guarantees about how long we have. Whether we are in the middle of a pandemic or not. It is just that the realities of the pandemic have brought all of us face to face with mortality more often than we might like.

So what do we do? It would be easy to get ourselves all stirred up or feel like we are in knots in the midst of everything. And no doubt there are times that we do. But we are not powerless. The anxiety does not have to be the dominant narrative in our lives.

We can remember the rest of the passage - remember the flowers and the birds. Remember all the ways God is present in the world and in our lives. God is with us. We are never alone. And we can seek out the resources that help us to be grounded and connected. While it can be tempting to withdraw and isolate ourselves when we feel anxious, connection is the key. Relationship is the key. We need each other. We need conversation. We need support and care. We need the people whose wisdom widens our perspective, who remind us of all the sources of hope that surround us. What are the lilies in our lives? Where is the beauty that takes our breath away? We need the people who help us laugh at ourselves, at life, at the world. We need the people whose presence brings a smile to our face. We need people whose very being helps us remember that no matter what happens today, we are a beloved child of God.

It is true that we cannot add hours to our life by worrying. We can add quality to our lives by taking care of ourselves. By seeking out all the resources that help us to care for our whole selves. By seeking out the relationships that restore our souls. By ensuring we have enough time with the people who make us laugh, keep us humble, and inspire us to be more faithful followers of Jesus. Amen.

Choosing Gratitude

with my grandmother on my wedding day

 

Rev. Molly F. James, PhD

DFMS Noonday Prayer via Zoom

Vincent de Paul, March 15, 2021

Psalm 37:19-42; Philippians 2:12-15; Luke 12:12-27

May God's word be spoken, May God's Word be heard, and May that point us to the living Word who is Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

A phone rang on a Sunday morning in September 1959.  It broke into the joyful chaos that is life with five children between the ages of three and fourteen.  It was a phone call she knew was coming, but that fact never does prepare one fully for the reality.  It was the phone call that told her that her husband, the love of her life, the father of her children was dead at thirty-eight.  The brain tumor that had taken his health and vitality, and had even begun to take his personality over the summer, had taken his life.   

Breaking into the silence of an empty nest, a phone rang in the summer of 1972.  She thought it might be one of her kids calling to say hi or perhaps her surgeon husband calling to say he was on his way home.  It was the phone call that told her that those swollen lymph nodes were not the lingering effects of a winter cold: they were cancer.  

A phone rang in a farmhouse kitchen on a cold January morning in 1990.  The nurse on the other end confirmed what she already knew in her heart.  Her husband of twenty-seven years had died in the night.  His body had given out. The cancer that had spread throughout his body and sent him into a coma, had taken his life.  

The portable phone on the end table next to the couch rang on a fall afternoon in 2003 and interrupted the quiet solitude of an afternoon spent knitting and reading.  It was her doctor on the line.  The biopsy results were back. She had lymphoma. 

These four phone calls all came to the same woman. And each time she hung up the phone, she had a choice.  When she lost her parents or had to endure the pain of watching her own children or grandchildren suffer, she had a choice. A choice to let that piece of news, that painful, horrible loss be the defining event of her life.  She could choose to let it be the lens through which she viewed the world.  Such an approach would not add hours to her span of life. It would diminish the quality of her life.   

Or she could choose to look around her and be grateful.  She could choose to celebrate life and to celebrate joys of her children.  Choose to be an active and involved mother who continued to play tennis and take her children to the lake in the summer.  Choose to marry again and spend the happy years of her husband's retirement living on a farm in Maine.  She could choose to be host to her grandchildren for countless summers, reading to them and teaching them about the farm and their own family history.  She could choose to be a great-grandmother who moved to an apartment in the city to be nearer to her family and to be able to watch her great-grandchildren learn to walk. 

The woman on the receiving end of these phone calls was my grandmother. For me, she has been my preeminent example of not worrying.  She lives out the conviction at the heart of Jesus' question to his disciples: “And can any of you by worrying add a single hour to your span of life?”  We know that worrying does not add hours to our life and that worrying diminishes the quality of the hours we do have. 

Of course there have been plenty of things to worry about in the course of the past year. It is important to note here what I think Jesus meant by “worry.” I don’t think he meant the kind of appropriate thoughtful caution that keeps us wearing masks and washing our hands. An invitation to “not worry” is not an invitation to be careless or reckless. An invitation to “not worry” is an invitation to reframe our current situation. It is an invitation to be mindful of our blessings, of all that we have to be thankful for, even in the midst of tragedy and loss. 

Even when we are living daily, as we have for the last year, with the profound reminder that life is precious and uncertain. Even when we cannot possibly know what tomorrow will bring.  We can find joy in the present. 

We can find hope and joy in the knowledge that we are precious children of God.  Jesus has spent much of today's Gospel reading affirming that fact. We are valued and beloved of God. God cares for us. 

In the midst of challenges, in the midst of tragedy, in a time when it would be so easy to focus on all that we have lost, as individuals, as a community, as a nation and a world. In the midst of all of that, Jesus invites us to keep our eyes and hearts open, as my grandmother did, so that we can see the love that surrounds us. It is my hope that as we move through the coming days and weeks, for we are not out of the woods yet, we will keep finding ways to ground ourselves in the truth that we are beloved. And we will keep finding ways to fill our hearts with gratitude. Because as Johannes Gaertner reminds us: “To speak gratitude is courteous and pleasant, to enact gratitude is generous and noble, but to live gratitude is to touch Heaven.”

AMEN.