So why worry?

It's easy to be concerned when someone is about to do something risky.  If one of my step-daughters suddenly took off for a third-world country that's plagued by violence without any extra money or security measures, it would be very easy for me to worry about her safety and well-being.  There would be many things that could happen to her, and it would be easy to focus on those negative possibilities and worry about her.  But my worrying wouldn't do a thing to change her situation, and it would make me rather miserable.  And if she called to say hi and I could only talk about how worried I was, I wouldn't be able to support or encourage her at all.

If I suddenly lost my job and didn't have any money in the bank, I most definitely could worry about my finances--I might end up losing my home and many of my possessions, and I could go into debt and ruin my credit rating.

But my worrying wouldn't help the situation at all, and it could negatively impact my health through the stress and strife that I would experience.

Worrying comes when we think of negative future possibilities.  It's that simple--we spend time and energy thinking about negative things that could happen, not that have happened.  And therefore the energy that were expending usually is wasted because those negative things tend not to come about after all.  Mark Twain said that "I am an old man and have known a great many troubles, but most of them never happened," and most of us can relate to this statement.  Most of what we worry about never comes to pass, and the time we spent worrying was time and energy wasted.

And even if the worst does come to pass, the worrying didn't do a thing to help make it less difficult, less intense, less negative.  We might have spent our time preparing for the outcome rather than worrying about it, but instead we devoted our energy to purely self-centered concern.

Worry is a reflection of a lack of faith that life will be good to us, a lack of faith that God and life are in control and will make our lives full and vibrant.  Worry reflects a lack of faith in oneself and in other people to do things that need to be done when they need to be done, and a lack of trust that we'll be able to deal with difficulties when they surface in our lives.

Worry keeps us from helping other people, it causes us many negative results through the stress and strife that it brings, and it wastes a lot of the precious energy that we have in our lives.  The only way to combat worry, it seems, is through acceptance--acceptance of the current situations in our lives--and attempting to take positive action to counter the effects of possible negative factors in our lives.  Worry doesn't change anything except our own stress levels, and it's important that we leave it behind as soon as we can if we wish to live our lives and our todays fully and completely.

Worrying may shorten one's life, but not as quickly as it once did.  The ancestor of our word, Old English wyrgan, meant "to strangle."  Its Middle English descendant, worien, kept this sense and developed the new sense "to grasp by the throat with the teeth and lacerate" or "to kill or injure by biting and shaking."  This is the way wolves or dogs might attack sheep, for example.  In the 16th century worry began to be used in the sense "to harass, as by rough treatment or attack," or "to assault verbally," and in the 17th century the word took on the sense "to bother, distress, or persecute."  It was a small step from this sense to the main modern senses "to cause to feel anxious or distressed" and "to feel troubled or uneasy," first recorded in the 19th century.  (from Houghton Mifflin/Yahoo)