Thursday night one of our smoke detectors started beeping. My husband went to investigate. When he pulled the smoke detector off the ceiling, one of the wires wasn’t connected and all our smoke detectors went off!
The kids and the dog were pretty scared, as you might imagine. He was able to make it stop, but over the course of the next hour, there was intermittent beeping as he fixed the problem. (If you watched “This is Us” on Sunday, you know we weren’t going to leave it unplugged! We also took the opportunity to review our fire safety plan and what we would do in the event of a real fire.
By the time it was all said and done, it was time for the kids to go to bed. But they were both shaken up and felt too scared to be alone in their bedrooms. Lila said that talking about the fire plan made her worried. William agreed.
So I told them to take their worries out of their heart and head and put them in my hand. I grasped them tightly and then I headed to the bathroom where I flushed them down the toilet!
We all laughed about it and I told them I’d take their worries and would flush them anytime they needed it. I talked about how I don’t want them to worry, I want them to just be kids and let Mom and Dad take care of things. I assured them they could sleep soundly because we were here, they didn’t need to be afraid.
Isn’t that just what God does for us? As our Father, He doesn’t want us to worry about anything because He’s in control. He’s going to take care of the things we need. He wants to take our worries and give us peace instead. He wants us to sleep soundly, knowing that it’s all going to be okay because He will take care of us—no matter what.
(I know that this is easier said than done. I’ve battled with worry much of my life. But I’m learning to worry less and to trust instead, it’s not worth the loss of peace, sleep, appetite, joy or time that it steals from me. Not only that, but just as I wanted to take my children’s worries, I know that God wants to take mine too. I just need to let Him.)
Do you have any worries you need to get rid of today? Pray about them, hand them over to God and then stop worrying about them. Trust Him instead! If you want to, you can even write down your worries and flush them! Worries are most certainly flush-worthy, aren’t they?
“Give all your worries and cares to God, for he cares for you.” – 1 Peter 5:7 NLT