ii. “What if” & “If only”

“If”. Such a little word, yet such an epic menace.

Anxiety loves to start sentences with “What if” or “If only”. In the height of my marriage-related anxiety, thoughts like “What if I’m making a mistake” and “If only I had a sign from God, then I’d know it’s going to be ok”, played on repeat. Even now, I can find myself coaxed into worrying about a never-ending list of potential upcoming disasters. I worry about what might happen if I get sick before an important event or whilst away on holiday, and I let my mind wander to anxious thoughts about the security I could’ve had if only I’d married an investment banker instead of my lovely, non-investment banker husband.

The trouble with the tiny but mighty word “if”, is that it lives in the future. And the future is a massive unknown. Irrespective of how much I worry about it, I cannot control whether any of my loved ones develop a terminal illness. I also cannot control suddenly being made redundant. Really, I even have a limited amount of control over the future of my marriage, because I do not control HF. Despite all my best wifely efforts, I don’t know for sure that he isn’t going to run off with someone else down the line, and there is no guarantee that we’ll have a long and/or happy marriage.

No wonder this little word has so much power over us; in the fallen world in which we live, there is a lot that could go wrong.

But the Bible has a pretty awesome antidote to “if”-syndrome. Jesus offers us an alternative to the endless worrying and wondering about how things are going to pan out. He promises that he has a plan for our lives, and that – unlike us – he really is in control.

Apparently God tells us “Do not be afraid” more than three hundred times in the Bible. Crikey. That’s a lot of reassurance, and from a good source – God, being in control of everything, doesn’t just want us to give up our addictions to hypothetical worrying. He wants us to lean on him fully, to stop trying to control things ourselves and then turning to jelly when we realise that we can’t. He asks us to trust him and his perfect plans.

So even “if” my life turns into a disaster, and that strange pain in my leg turns out to be an incurable disease, and HF decides he’s had enough of me and leaves for someone far more interesting and a million times more beautiful, Jesus tells me he’s with me for the long-haul.

Nothing is a surprise to God – he doesn’t deal in “if”s. He knew I’d type these words before I even thought of them, and he knew you’d read them exactly where you are, right now. We don’t have to live trapped by fear of the unknown, because all things are known to him.

So I don’t need to be afraid of the ‘what ifs’ – if only I trust him.