It will be okay: a letter to the worrier.
By Hannah Preikschat
Hannah is a dreamer, a book enthusiast, and an aspiring author. She's happiest when she's making other people laugh (or when she's napping). You can usually find her with her nose in a book, daydreaming, and eating homemade cookies.
Okay, I don’t know about you, but I have been an avid worrier for a large portion of my life. Somehow, for some reason, my brain has decided that I should overthink pretty much everything. When I was younger, my worries included big dogs, turbulence on airplanes, and getting a bad mark on a test.
Now I’m slightly older, and unfortunately, these worries haven’t gone away. I have also found a whole bunch of new things to worry about (how exciting!) such as college, sexuality, friendships, and the ever-looming “future” that I’m not quite sure how to prepare for. Oh, and I also have a slew of irrational things that stress me out, such as, but by no means limited to, airbags, jumping off of docks, and whatever lives at the bottom of the ocean.
So yeah. I worry. A lot. And honestly, I don’t think that I’m the only one. This can be a rather worrisome time to be alive. Figuring out who you are and who you want to be is stressful enough. Throw in some relationship troubles, global warming, and an existential crisis or two, and worrying is pretty much a guarantee.
Worrying is a part of human nature. It’s a completely natural and normal thing to do. What’s NOT natural and normal is letting worry take over your life. I’ve literally gone through periods where I had a hard time eating because anxieties were unleashing butterflies in my stomach. Sometimes it has taken me hours to fall asleep because my head is too busy running through all the terrifying unknowns and what-ifs that the next day is going to bring.
Maybe this is you. Maybe you’re reading this and nodding a little bit and you’re thinking, “I worry about way too many things, too. Sometimes I have a hard time sleeping, too. Sometimes I get overwhelmed by what-ifs, too.” Maybe you’re tired of worrying. Maybe, like me, you’re wishing that you weren’t quite so nervous all the time.
For me, something that has helped me in my journey of becoming less burdened by worries is remembering that nothing lasts forever, and usually things seem a lot less scary once they’re done. That test you’re worried about taking tomorrow? It’ll be over in 24 hours, and you’ll probably never think about it again. The job interview that you’ve been stressing about? It’s probably going to last for less than an hour, and afterwards you’re either going to get the job or find a new one. No matter what happens, you’re going to be okay.
“It’ll be okay.” That phrase used to really confuse me. “How can someone possibly know that things will be okay?” I used to think. “What if everything is just terrible for the rest of my life? What if things are never okay ever again?” It just seemed like such an nonreassuring and unreliable thing to say.
But now, I think I kind of understand it better. Things might never be the way they used to be, and things might be really bad for a really long time. But they always get better. I really do believe that people are much more resilient than they think they are. Yes, you might fail a test. Yeah, you might totally flub that job interview. Yes, the stuff at the bottom of the ocean is super freaky and it might worry you for a while. But life moves on, and so do we!!
The things that seem super overwhelming right now won’t always feel that way, I promise. 1 Corinthians 10:13 says that God never lets anything happen to us that we aren’t able to handle, and in my experience this is always true.
Tomorrow afternoon, I’m going to go to university for the first time, and I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t worried. I’m worried that I'll get bad grades, I’m worried I won’t make friends, I’m worried that I’ll have an insane amount of homework and not have time to do anything fun anymore. Honestly, I don’t think that there’s anything about university that doesn’t seem incredibly daunting right now. I’m almost 100% sure that I’m going to cry tomorrow morning.
But tomorrow night, the first day of university will be done. Whatever happens, good or bad, it will be in the past. Whatever happens, I will be able to handle it. Whatever happens, I will probably fall asleep tomorrow night thinking that I shouldn’t have worried nearly as much as I did, because life has a funny way of sorting itself out.
I hope that you’re not worried about what tomorrow will bring. But if you are, I hope that things seem a lot less worrisome soon. I hope that soon, whatever is worrying you is in the past and you’re able to realize that you got through it and it wasn’t as bad as you thought it would be. I hope that you start worrying a bit less, knowing that you’re able to overcome whatever comes your way. I hope that you can start breathing a little bit easier.