Don't Sweat the Small Stuff

“Don’t sweat the small stuff,” they say.  Who the fuck are “THEY” and what do they really know?  In Matthew 6, Jesus tells us not to worry about tomorrow because it brings its own worries, and to not even concern ourselves with what to eat or drink, what to wear, not even to worry about our own life, because He’s got us.  Yeah, I couldn’t do that when I was living in my car with my babies or on the streets because I couldn’t pay the high cost of living, or going hungry because I had to make one box of macaroni last a few days, have a thousand contacts in my phone but not one person I could really call if I needed it, that had no family to turn to in times of need,  or puking my guts out from the chemo eating my insides fighting a cancer that invaded my body, or being afraid  to go to sleep with an unlocked door, or walk around a corner or a dark alley to protect myself from being raped or attacked, or fight the fear when someone I love leaves they will come back to me.  Don’t sweat the small stuff, huh?  Life is hard, and it’s ALL made up of small stuff.

This is where I fail. I had a conversation last night about this very topic with a new friend who was trying to encourage me to look at the bigger picture and focus on that, and I still have a huge fucking lump in my throat this morning because though I can clearly see the big pretty amazing picture, I still sweat the small stuff. The big picture is make up of a billion tiny pixels, or a billion puzzle pieces, or a billion paint strokes. It doesn’t come out automatically whole or complete.

This is something my ex would constantly tell me - say I worried too much, that I cared too much, that I concerned myself too much.  “What will be will be, don’t worry and just go with the flow. Worrying about it won’t change a damned thing.” Well, he was right in the way that all that conern and worry never changed anything.  It didn’t stop the inevitable from happening. I worried for nothing.  What I feared would happen - happened, what I saw written on the walls became fulfilled, and all the small stuff I sweated because they kept getting ignored  - turned into the mountain that destroyed us. I never gave up – I tried to fight every fucking single SMALL thing that threatened us. I was a fool. I tried to fix the errors in the code of a program being written because I knew it wouldn’t work if the sequence of ones and zeros were out of line. But, hey, ‘Don’t sweat the small stuff,” they say.

I guess the bottom line is that I can’t stop sweating the small stuff because I don’t have enough faith in God, in myself, or in anyone else to take care of even my basic fundamental needs, much less the big picture.  This is more than likely the flaw that will keep me alone because it’s a scar that was created by a life long series of cuts. Man, it’s a beautiful concept, and one I wish with my whole heart I could embrace. But I’d be lying.

Till next time,

~T.L. Gray