While hiking on a trail in Little River Canyon Mouth Park I look down and spot this brave toad frog waiting for some take out food to happen past.  My presence did not seem to irritate him at all as he sat comfortably upon this mossy stone eagerly anticipating the delivery guy.  His gaze was focused keenly upon his rocky dining room table as visions of chubby beetles and plump grubs danced in his head.  He was so into the moment that the presence of a large Alabama boy standing over him with a camera and a tripod did not affect him in the least.

        What is it that makes animals react so differently to the presence of attractive and mildly intimidating Alabama men?  Some animals fidget and squirm, some run and hide and others set indifferently like Mr. Frog just to see what I will do next?  We all react differently to the things that bother us.  Each of us will face many things in life we will not fully understand; tears and fears, sorrow and disappointments, anxiety and pressures from within and without.  Stress is certain, problems are going to come our way and some things are going to bug us; the real question is how are we going to handle these irritations and troubles?

        Instead of dealing with our problems most people simply choose to worry about them.  We spend our time anticipating trouble and distressing about what may never happen.  We have turned anxiety and apprehension into an art form.  We are like the guy who said, “Don’t tell me that worry doesn’t do any good. I know better. The things I worry about don’t happen”.  We all seem to worry, putter, push and shove, hunting little molehills to make mountains of.

        Do we not realize that worry and anxiety is killing us and sapping us of our vitality and strength?  I read where one physician said that, “seventy percent of all patients could cure themselves if they only got rid of their fears, worries, and bad eating habits”.  We are so made that worry and anxiety are sand in the machinery of life; worry is wasting today’s time to clutter up tomorrow’s opportunities with yesterday’s troubles.  You cannot change the past, but you can ruin a perfectly good present by worrying over the future.  Life lived in worry invites death in a hurry.  Choose to live a life of faith, trust and courage; we need not worry about what the future holds for us if we know who holds the future.

Something to think about:

• There are two days in one’s life about which no one should worry—yesterday and tomorrow.

• Worry pulls tomorrow’s cloud over today’s sunshine.

• Ulcers are not caused so much by what you eat as what you allow to eat you.

• The man yesterday who worried about tomorrow isn’t here today.

• The best cure for worry is to go deliberately forth and try to lift the gloom off somebody else.

• The troubles of yesterday added to the worries of tomorrow are too heavy to be carried today.

• Anything worth worrying about is worth praying about.

• Worry never robs tomorrow of its sorrow, it only saps today of its strength.

• Today is the tomorrow you worried about yesterday, and all is well.

Don’t worry,
Rickey Moore