Worry is like a rocking chair: it moves you around a lot but doesn’t take you anywhere.

“Overcoming an Anxious Mind” Devotional, YouVersion App

“Three weeks in, three weeks out. Three weeks in, three weeks out.” I found myself repeating that in my head as I was face down, cheeks mashed into the little cutout on the PT table.

I have shoulder surgery scheduled in three weeks and I’m in a lot of pain. Even though PT didn’t heal the tendon, the ultrasound heat alleviates some of the pain so I’m continuing to go to appointments. Three weeks until surgery; hopefully, three weeks after that and the worst of the pain will be over.

As I drove the two miles home from PT on Wednesday, I passed three senior housing/assisted living/memory care facilities. I turned right next to one and I started wondering, “Where will I end up? How long can we stay in our house? Where will Cody be? Who can help us with our house?”

Are you sensing the worry? To reference that first quote, the rocking chair was a movin’!

We live in Minnesota. Minnesota has some serious winters. This winter we’ve had some serious snow. And we have to rake it off our house after each snow fall. Needless to say, that hasn’t helped my shoulder.

So when I started getting anxious about my future living conditions, it was with a torn shoulder tendon and snow and shoveling and roof raking in mind. (Have I mentioned I’m only 49? Yep, I’m worrying about something that will not likely happen for decades. Many decades.)

Amidst all that worrying, God has sent me multiple reminders this week to pay attention to what’s right in front of me instead. I actually read my daily devotional with the rocking chair quote right after I got home from PT…and my drive worrying about my living conditions 30 years from now. Then God sent this beauty:

When we endlessly ruminate over distant times, we miss extraordinary things in the present moment. These extraordinary things are, in actual fact, all we have: the here and now.

Katherine May

I mentioned the snow (oh, my, the snow!) we’ve had this year. I also saw a graph yesterday that showed we’ve had exactly two days of sun in the last 31 days. That means we’ve had 29 days of clouds (I used the “old math” so maybe I’m wrong but I’m pretty sure that’s a LOT of cloudy days).

Yesterday morning, for the third time in 31 days, we had sun. It grabbed my attention as it just began to peak over the neighbors’ house. And the rays reached me as I sat on the couch. As the rays moved down the length of the couch, so did I.

Chuck’s grandparents’ antique, oak curved-backed rocking chair sits in our living room in front of a big picture window. I’ve been known to turn it around in the mornings and enjoy the sunlight streaming through the glass. Which I did after the rays moved beyond the end of the couch.

For many years, at great cost, I traveled through many countries, saw the high mountains, the oceans. The only things I did not see were the sparkling dewdrops in the grass just outside my door.

Rabindranath Tagore

Maybe those little things we notice if we pay attention to the here and now are gifts, beauty to brighten our day and ease our anxieties.

“Maybe the sunshine is my gift today,” I thought as I soaked up the sun’s rays from the rocking chair.

An extraordinary thing in the present moment.

Sun heating up my fluffy, fleece bathrobe and the exposed skin on my hands. Diamonds seemingly scattered all over the snow, dazzling in the rays of light drifting across my front yard. A cardinal singing as it, no doubt, was also basking in the warmth of the sun.

Mind slowing down.
Body getting heavy.
Rocking chair still.