Joni was a very successful young lady. She had breezed through high school and college, then right on into the business world. She made a significant impression on her bosses and was rewarded for her abilities and her initiative. She became known as a valuable member of the team. However, as time went by, she began to worry if she would be able to maintain her above-average performance. However, as she moved up, she began to question her value and feared that others would someday eclipse her ability.

She even began to doubt herself. Perhaps she wasn’t really as good as other people thought she was. Perhaps she had come this far by accident. Perhaps she really was the fraud that she felt she was. She feared that someday others would discover “the truth” about her and that she would lose her job – or at least be demoted back to “where she belonged”.

Her days became troubled with thoughts of having to push harder to prove her worth. Her nights were restless, filled with worries about deadlines and keeping up at work; losing her job and having to find a new one; company politics and criticism; and about a million other concerns. She began to sleep less and worry more. It became harder and harder to get up and face each new day.
When she turned thirty, she was concerned that she still had not found “Mr. Right.” All of her college girlfriends had long since married and started families. Would she ever find someone to spend her life with? Would she ever have a family of her own?

Each new squeak or rattle made her fear that her car was about to break down. When interest rates went up, she worried that she would never be able to afford to buy her own home. When they went down, she worried that her savings and her investments might not be enough to see her through retirement. When her father retired from his career, she worried that she would soon have to provide her parents with long-term financial support.

When the mother of a friend was diagnosed with cancer, Joni began to worry that she, too, would someday fall victim to the disease. She fretted over each checkup with the doctor, fearing that this would be the time the cancer would be discovered. When the stress and worry began to eat away at her stomach, she feared that pain was from developing heart disease. Her cholesterol numbers were too high and her iron levels were too low. She exercised too little and weighed too much. Everything in her life was out of whack.


Each new worry seemed as though it brought two or three others along with it. Worry piled upon worry until the worry squeezed everything else out. Eventually, everything in Joni’s life remotely resembling joy or purpose was lost in a death spiral of worry. How did this happen?

SCRIPTURAL POINTS OF LIGHT

Psalm 46; Matthew 6:25-34; Philippians 4:10-13; Isaiah 40:28-31; Proverbs 3:5-10; Ecclesiastes 12:8-14; Jeremiah 29:11; John 10:10b; Luke 12:22-31; 1 John 5:1-5; Matthew 4:1-3; Job 1:21; Hebrews 11:8-10; Psalm 56:3-4; Psalm 86:1-13