But I Do Have A Pot!

Note to self: Giving into anxiety gives you something to do but doesn’t fix the problem.

One of the challenges of moving out is realizing that you do not have a lot of “stuff” – and by “stuff” I mean the useful odds and ends that get you through the day-to-day. You may gather all the boxes in your new abode and feel like you have a ton of *shtuff* and you couldn’t possibly need another thing from Aunt So-and-So’s kitchen, but all it takes is the first real attempts at working life in a new space to realize what you don’t have. For example, the first morning of my first week in my apartment, I woke with the great ambition of making the “first pot of coffee.” I had the French Press, I had the coffee mug, I had the coffee grounds. But how on earth was I supposed to boil water without a kettle?! Panic set in deep, from throat to toes, as I realized a morning ritual that executed well at Mom and Pop’s place suddenly was incomplete in mine. Would I need to go to Starbucks? Do I dare use hot tap water? Is that even sanitary?

Then, I remembered the recipe for boiling water…in a pot. And I did have a pot! Phew.

As the water started to cheerfully boil in that shiny pot, I realized I had not yet measured out the coffee grinds for the pressing. It was then that the deep panic returned: I did not have a coffee scoop. Like, do you use a spoon – just any spoon? How much even goes in an official coffee scoop anyway? Cue iPhone and Siri assistance, and the need to rummage through the boxes for that teaspoon I knew my sister-in-law had packed for me. Once again: phew.

This is just one example of silly panic that has entered my life as I have had survived almost a month on my own. Survival (not Robinson-Crusoe-level survival, but still) on my own has required that I become thrifty and almost engineer-like in my approach to cooking, storing items, and building up life on my own. I would say I am embarrassed to acknowledge that at least every day of this month thus far has held at least one mini panic session of what will I do? Can I make this work? Am I going to be okay? Is that a problem big enough to call mom about? to which the session usually ends with I will figure it out, I will make it work, I’ve been fine thus far, and no, I’m not calling mom – Amen and thank you, Jesus.  My most honest answer to the “how’s it going” is that it is indeed “going” – joyfully, often comically, and adventurously “going”.

The one recurring theme of life as I know it now has been “do not be anxious about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, nor about your body, what you will put on. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing? Look at the birds of the air: they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they? And which of you by being anxious can add a single hour to his span of life?” (Matthew 6:25-27).

I am a worrier, and I worry about the fact that I worry, which makes me worry more. And it takes a lot of mental baby steps to rework my mind from the “what ifs” to the “what I have and can do because God has not left me dumb in this moment.” I was not the child who never learned to work a stove, a sink, a clothes washer, or even how to use the elbow grease. But even though one can spend years learning about something, he or she will never actually know how to do that thing until they are doing it. Despite all the college, it took me six months to get comfortable working as a paralegal and I expect it will take as long to get comfortable living life independent of my childhood environment – there are just some things that books and mom can’t teach the way hands-on life will. And that is where worrying needs to take a backseat – or even needs to be dropped off at the next light.

Worrying does not mysteriously fix anything – physical, mental, or spiritual ailments alike. It definitely gives me something to expend energy over, but ultimately it fixes nothing. Pausing to think and assess a situation can be a little hard if one is actually trying to make the coffee that will help one think, but the reality is worrying doesn’t help the thinking  or the situation overall.  God is good and He is attentive to our needs even if His attention and provision isn’t as clean cut as we may hope for, or as “advanced” as it seems His blessings are for every one else. The blessing is in the here and now, in the uncertainty of anything beyond the present, and in the grateful acceptance of the I-don’t-have-a kettle-but-I-do-have-a-pot!