Worries

Good morning, God, and thank you for the opportunities that this new day has brought to us. We have an entire day stretching out before us, full of many chances to be nice to people, to give to people, to compliment and encourage, to share and to love. I hope that I'm able to take advantage of as many of those opportunities as I can.

It's kind of amazing that there are so many different things coming up in my life right now, so many different new things to do and new possibilities, yet behind it all are the worries that a summer without full-time work can bring. We're still paying off someone else's loan--money that we don't really have--so we're stuck in an extremely difficult financial situation that isn't getting any better. We have to pay out $1000 a month that we don't owe--and you know the reasons why--so that someone else doesn't lose her home. It's extremely difficult, and though the fall looks to be more positive, I won't see a paycheck from the fall until September. Until then, we have to struggle by.

The plans that I had for bringing in money this summer aren't working out, unfortunately. I've definitely tried, but so far, no go. So we're watching what we owe start to increase again, and neither of us want to be stuck in that type of situation again. We've worked too hard to get out of it, and now we see ourselves being dragged under again. It's only for a short time, it seems, but a lot of damage can be done in a short time.  We both know that making the payments is the right thing to do, but why does doing the right thing cause so much damage to us and cause so much worry? It's extremely difficult to deal with, and we're not getting any help from anyone to alleviate the situation.

A reply:

You're very welcome for the day. I hope that you make it a marvelous one.

We've talked about the money issues before. This is the first time you've been so specific about the causes, though. Your financial problems are being caused by your willingness to help out other people and to make sure that someone else doesn't go under because of a commitment that you made over a decade ago. Your worries are caused by a combination of your need to be in control of situations and a lack of faith that things will be okay--even better than okay. You will not go under. There will be resolutions to problems that you cannot see or even imagine right now.

It's okay to have a lack of faith. There are many so-called religious people who try to make a lack of faith seem to be a personal fault, something that only less-devout people suffer from. The truth is, though, that anyone who tells another person that a lack of faith is a personal shortcoming, really doesn't know what faith is. Faith is something that you strive for, not something that just magically appears because you "believe in" me. Your personal faith doesn't give you any sort of personal in with me--I love all of you equally--though it can improve your life simply by the nature of what it is.

You see, having faith helps you to think with confidence, and when you think and act with confidence, doors open up to you simply because you approach things differently. You don't go to a job interview thinking negative thoughts and hoping against hope that you may get hired; rather, you go to that interview knowing that you have a lot to offer and that you could be a tremendous asset to the organization. With confidence, you don't talk to other people in a hesitating fashion, hoping that they'll like you; instead, you talk to them knowing that you have a lot to offer them, and that if they reject you for whatever reason, the problem is theirs, not yours.

And many people mistake this type of approach as arrogance--but there's a huge difference between arrogance and confidence. A confident person will recognize another confident person, yet a person who has little confidence will often mistake confidence for arrogance. Unfortunately, they'll also often mistake arrogance for simple confidence, and they don't notice the warning signs of the problems that an arrogant person can cause.

Your faith can give you confidence. It can't cause money to appear out of nowhere, and it can't change situations immediately. But the confidence that comes from a clear and simple faith can help to change situations, and it can also help you to feel at peace and to get more from each day that you live because you're coming from a place of peace. And when you feel at peace, you're able to treat others much better. Have faith. That's not a mandate, but a suggestion.