I feared a LOT of things as a child.

Ask my stepmom, Honey, who would assure then reassure me many times that my heart beating super fast in my chest wasn’t a sign that something was wrong with me. I’m pretty sure I had this fear because I watched a clip of a movie about a kid who died from a heart disease or something like that, and I feared the same fate.

I believe the dreadful words in the film were: “His heart was too big for his body.” Spoken by a mother in tears to her child’s best friend, trying to explain the little boy’s demise.

It’s crazy how a line so simple impacted my little mind so much. From then on, if I felt my heart beating extremely hard or fast, I worried that my heart was also too big for my body, and that I would also pass away. And this worry would breed other worries I had as I grew older…worry – and as a result, fear – became a normal thing for me.

Now that I’m older, I do worry less, as I see the impact it has on my mental, and sometimes even physical, health. But I do try to hold onto the Bible verses that my parents taught me to help me shake the anxiety whenever it does arise…

“Therefore I tell you, do not be anxious about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, nor about your body, what you will put on. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing? Look at the birds of the air: they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they? And which of you by being anxious can add a single hour to his span of life? And why are you anxious about clothing? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow: they neither toil nor spin, yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these. But if God so clothes the grass of the field, which today is alive and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will he not much more clothe you, O you of little faith? Therefore do not be anxious, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’ For the Gentiles seek after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them all.”
‭‭Matthew‬ ‭6‬:‭25‬-‭32‬ ‭ESV‬‬

Mishy 🦋