DON'T WORRY 'BOUT A THING
Birds Do It
DRAPER’S PAPER ROUTE
DON’T WORRY ‘BOUT A THING
by Adam Carroll Draper
“Let the young soul, looking back on life, ask yourself, ‘What have you really loved up until now; what has drawn your soul, dominated it and made it joyful at the same time?’ Consider these venerated objects, and they will show you, by their being and their sequence, a law – the fundamental law of your true self.”
Friedrich Neitzsche
A couple of days, actual dates, stand out in my life. Stefanie and I were married on October 25, 2013. My daughter, Jordan, was born on February 10, 1989; and she got married on October 16, 2016. These were extremely happy moments. My first dog, Wilson, got hit by a car while I was watching on January 11, 1974. That was not so fun. Those dates stand out to me vividly, though. I remember when the space shuttle blew up, but I don’t remember the date. I remember the years when Carolina won the National Championship in basketball, and when the Cowboys won the Superbowl, but I don’t remember the dates.
As Forest Gump said, “It’s odd what a man recollects.”
On February 7, 2000, I had just finished reading a morning devotion when a moment… happened. I had been reading about how Kenneth Hagin had not worried or fretted about anything since the late 1930’s. I remember thinking, “Cool for that dude. He doesn’t have a bunch of clients that will sue him for not worrying.” I was about to close the book, but an amazing quiet or calmness came over me, along with a prescient question.
“Have you ever stopped to consider what life would be like if you did not worry?”
Let me say this. I did not hear a voice. It was not like when Kevin Costner heard, “If you build it, they will come.” But it felt subtly profound. It felt like a still, small voice (or how I thought one would sound, I guess). For once, I paid attention. I knew it was God. Just knew. OK, I know I am going to get all kinds of references, like Ian Hunter’s “Your Never Alone with a Schizophrenic,” but there it is. I said it.
I am not going to belabor the “conversation” that went on because the only thing crazier than talking to yourself is answering. Let me just say that God got me to honestly think about what life would look like if I did not worry. That would be so… there aren’t words – which is why it was profound to honestly consider it. One of the first things that occurred to me is that people want to be rich so that we don’t have to worry. But right after that, I realized that as soon as I got rich, I’d probably start worrying about losing it all.
I thought, “Yeah, it would be great if I didn’t ever worry. It would also be great if I could fly or walk on water.”
Eventually, it settled in on me that the Lord was not saying that I did not have to worry. It’s more like a command. Rather than chalk that one up to all the other commands I couldn’t do (like turn other cheek seventy times seven), I started truly thinking about what I was being shown. I knew He was showing me something that I had refused to see before. Once I committed to that truth (that I was actually being lead), a whole wash of clarity came over me.
Think about it this way. If you heard that Jesus was in, I don’t know, let’s say… Burkina Faso (right now), what would you do? Better than that, what if the Archangel Gabriel showed up to you and said, “The Lord doth summon you to Him in Burkina Faso?” I’m flying to Ouagadougou! Whatever it takes. Not killing and stealing, but I’d sell, borrow, cajole - walk, swim, crawl (that kind of whatever). I mean, how you got there would probably matter to Jesus. The ends does not justify the means – like… ever!
Right in the middle of thinking about what I would do the moment I had to do “whatever” to get to Jesus (wherever He was), the “radicalness” hit. Jesus is not in a distant land. He is in a moment, “Don’t worry, trust me!”
In fact, trusting God and refusing to worry is a key to the kingdom. The Lord is in all the irreducible moments like that. In Romans, Paul says that the kingdom of God is “righteousness, peace and joy in the Holy Ghost.” Jesus is right smack dab in the middle of “Don’t Worry!”
“The kingdom of God is within you.”
I was overwhelmed by this revelation. Refusing to worry must have consequences. I mean, people who don’t worry get run over by trucks, or worse - they miss deadlines! Worry is part of natural selection. Think about it. Why do we all fear snakes? Because in a state of nature, the mental giants who did not fear snakes tended to die before they got old enough procreate. But I realized that if Jesus is in the middle of not worrying, the consequences of trusting Him become the charred remains an old life. That’s a “damn the torpedoes” moment if there ever was one. It was more radical than any starry intramural field contemplation of phenomenology I’d ever smoked.
The problem was that I had absolutely no idea how to live without worrying. If Jesus was in that country, it would have to be discovered because I did not know how to get there, and I certainly did not know how to live there. I figured I had to map it, so I started a journal. I called it “The Journal of the Undiscovered Country,” which I took from Hamlet’s third soliloquy: “Who would fardels [burdens] bear, To groan and sweat under a weary life, But that the fear of death, The undiscovered country, from whose bourn No traveler returns, puzzles the will, And makes us rather bear those ills we have than to fly to others we know not of?”
I have been writing in The Journal of the Undiscovered Country since February 7, 2000. I am a little better at not worrying. It has changed the entire song of my life, however. Ask anyone who has known me that long.
If you got anything out of this missive, please comment, give it a thumbs up, share it - or some such thing. It helps. I really appreciate that you took the time to read this.