Worry, My Inner Foe

I wake up these mornings fighting off the anxiety that seems to have lain in wait for me while I slept. Will there be more frightening news today? Will the Covid-19 infection rate start to decline? Are my family and friends safe and healthy? Am I? Will things ever go back to the way they were? I didn’t know how much I liked the way things were until it was swept away by this awful virus, this invisible enemy.

Then there is the crazed robin in my yard. Every morning he flings himself at my windows. Thunk. Thunk. Thunk. Sometimes the noise makes it impossible to work. He finally ceases his attack only to lay siege to the side-view mirror of my car, turning the black finish white in the process. It drives me and Gracie crazy. “You’re a bird dog,” I say to her. “Do something!” But she only paces back and forth, a worried expression on her face, tail drooping.

Finally I appealed to our vet, Dr. June. “What do I do about this crazy bird?”

“He’s not crazy, just territorial,” Dr. June told me. “This is nesting season and he’s staking claim to your yard. He sees his reflection in your windows or in the side-view mirror of your car and he thinks he sees a rival, an enemy. Close your curtains and hang a towel over the mirror. That should stop it.”

Dr. June’s advice worked. No longer agitated, the robin flew off. But something else my vet said stayed with me. What the bird took to be his enemy was really just his own reflection. I am the same way. I think my anxiety is something prompted by the uncertainties of the day. Yet those are external factors. My fears and worries are internal. They do not lie in wait but arise within me. And too often they occupy the space where grace should be, where the one thing I can be certain of—God’s protective love—can abide. Yes, I wake up to a troubled world these days, but I also wake up to a loving God who has lain in wait for me while I slept.

God of love and protection, abide with me during these difficult times.