November 28 — Worry
“We’re in much less danger of… worry.” — Alcoholics Anonymous
Bill W. drops that line so casually you almost miss it. Much less danger of...worry. In my drinking years, I was in constant danger of worry. I practically lived in the emergency room of my own imagination. And even sober, that old wiring still tries to fire up and tell me something’s wrong—even when nothing is wrong.
Bill follows it in the 12&12 with another line that hits even harder: “We have been talking about problems because we are problem people.” On the surface, it sounds like he’s talking about the messes we created while drinking. But I heard a guy in a meeting twist it just right: “In my ungrateful state, I don’t just have problems—I see problems.”
It’s like that kid in The Sixth Sense whispering, “I see dead people.” Same vibe. I see problems. Real ones, imaginary ones, recycled ones, ones I borrow from the past or the future—anything except the present moment where God actually lives. And once I spot them, man, I latch on. I obsess. I spin out. I pick the problem apart until it’s bigger than God.
The band The Growlers nailed it:
“Worry is a bully
That just won’t let me be
Trying to keep me busy
Tussling and struggling.”
That’s my alcoholic mind in its ungrateful mode—keeping me spiritually busy, wrestling with shadows, arguing with outcomes that haven’t even happened.
And here’s the sick part: sometimes I try to fill the hole in my soul with reasons it can’t be filled. Reasons the world is unfair. Reasons everything is about to fall apart. Reasons I’m not enough. That restless, irritable, discontent feeling sneaks up without warning, and worry is almost always the front door it walks through.
But there’s a little crowbar in the program that pops that door back open: “Thy will, not mine, be done.” One breath of surrender. One second of remembering that I don't have to be the director of the universe today. That quick prayer lets me step aside—so God can do His work through me instead of me wrestling Him for control like a toddler fighting over the steering wheel.
It works. It really does.
Where does worry still try to sneak into your sobriety, and how do you slow it down before it takes over your whole day?
