Don't worry ... Be Happy!

When Bobby McFerrin wrote his song by that title, it instantly became my personal theme song.  For many years, I viewed worry as negative prayer.  If you worry enough about something, it's bound to happen.  Many years ago, an acquaintance worried that she would get cancer; five years later she was dead of liver cancer.  Just recently, I went against my own advice on a much less critical matter: I had on white capris for a Memorial Day party and was slicing strawberries shortly before I left, telling myself to not get any on my white pants. Yep, you guessed it - almost near the end of my slicing and dicing, a rogue slice landed on the white pants.  Where am I going with these personal musings?  To let you know that when you worry about your kids, the thing you worry about most may actually happen.  Your son is on the football team and you worry that he'll get injured, or your teenage daughter dates an older boy and you worry that she'll get pregnant ... is there anything good that can come from those worries?  NO!  If you are a praying person, you'll pray that your son and daughter stay safe.  Do you see the difference?  When you worry, you hope things won't happen.  When you pray, you hope for things that will happen.  Now, I'm not the type of person who actually asks God for gifts, so the nature of my prayers is slightly different from most folks.  But the bottom line is that when you worry, you actually draw in the problems of the universe like iron filings to a magnet.  When you visualize your son succeeding at the football game or your daughter enjoying good clean fun with the boyfriend, you also pull in the positive aspects of life like those iron fillings. So, when it comes to your children, let them play, discover their own mistakes, and fix their boo-boos when they happen. Pull the power of positive thinking into your life.

In other words, Don't Worry ... Be Happy!