As someone who specializes in control, I’ve often found myself consumed with the conduct of not only the people around me, but the parts inside me. I know that my body doesn’t need my help to breathe, or digest food, or keep my heart beating, but sometimes I think it does. It’s not like I can make my heart pump, I understand, but I am often very diligent about how well it’s doing.
If I feel the slightest twinge or cramp on the left side of my body, I’m sure my heart is in need of my assistance. And my assistant is worry, worry that my heart has forgotten its job, keeping me alive!
And though my heart has been beating without my supervision my entire life, I still feel like it needs my close supervision. Ironically, the part of my body actually responsible for keeping the operation going isn’t worried at all; my brainstem. I say ‘my,’ and suddenly I feel kinda special. God gave me something amazing when he gave me a brain stem. The name itself betrays its power. A stem doesn’t get all the glory the petals get, but the stem is incredible. My brainstem, of which at this moment I am very proud, regulates all the stuff inside my body that, though I’d love to be more in control of, doesn’t need my guidance on a moment-by-moment basis at all.
From my breathing to keeping my blood flowing, to swallowing, digesting, and sleeping, my brainstem is the master of them all. Making sure I stay alive, without so much as a walkthrough by me.
But I wonder at what age I started to micromanage the process, because somewhere along the way, I did. I went from carefree and completely oblivious to panicked and sure my appendix was about to burst, my liver was toxic, and my gut needed a full cleanse in just a matter of decades. And somewhere along the way, managing my vital organs became my full-time job, and a demanding job it is.
There’s always something to check, something to Google, something to notice, and some perfectly ordinary bodily sensation that needs my undivided attention and worry.
And the worst part is the older you get, the more the job description expands. And with that job comes the responsibility of not only monitoring your body, but also making sure nothing bad happens to it.
In this process, I personally have shrunk the definition of a good day down to this:
Nothing bad happened.
I didn’t hurt.
I didn’t get scared.
Nobody I love died.
Nothing went wrong.
Nothing happened that I couldn’t control.
Success!
Ugh, that’s a pretty high bar for a life, isn’t it?
I must have pure perfection, or else something must be wrong.
Unfortunately, when your highest goal is to make sure nothing bad happens to you, eventually you end up eliminating anything that might possibly “ruin” your day, and that’s most of the good stuff.
Work too hard, and your heart could give out.
Ignore sharp pain, and you could die tomorrow.
Love somebody, and they could break your heart.
Try something new, and you could fail.
Let your kid go, and they could get hurt.
Hope for something, and you could be crushed.
There is always a reason not to risk any of that when your highest priority is not getting hurt.
But in the process of not getting hurt, we end up so overwhelmed that living becomes an exercise in anxiety.
Which brings me back to my brainstem. For decades, I didn’t know the job of keeping my body functioning was already taken. I mean, the fact that God wrote protection into our bodies before we even knew enough to worry about them is magical. My brainstem was already managing my blood pressure before I even knew what that was. Before I knew enough to be afraid of dying, my body was already working very hard to keep me alive, but then I came along and tried to help my brainstem out with the wonderful power of worry, as if God had forgotten something essential to my survival: anxiety. And as if anxiety has the power to keep my blood flowing at the proper pressure, and my heart beating peacefully.
Isn’t it ironic that you can lose your life by trying too hard to save it? Not lose it, in the literal sense, but lose it in the living sense. And I know because I’ve done it. I’ve spent perfectly good days trying to prevent potentially bad ones. Giving hours of my life to illnesses I never had, disasters that never happened, and problems that never came. All in the name of staying safe.
Turns out standing guard over your life and living your life are two very different occupations. And I’m ready to quit one.
Maybe I’m a freak. Maybe I’m the only one who worries about every odd sensation in my body. Maybe you don’t worry about your heart. You’ve never Googled a symptom and diagnosed yourself with something that requires an immediate trip to the ER. If so, congratulations.
But maybe you stand guard over something else. I’m just spitballing here, maybe it’s your kids. Your money. Your marriage. Your reputation. Your future. Your plans. Maybe you’re not trying to keep your heart from failing, but you’re working super hard trying to keep your life from failing.
And maybe we could all ask the same question: What am I trying to control that was never mine to control?
Because I’m starting to think there are jobs God gave me and jobs I gave myself.
Keeping my heart beating was never on my to-do list. Neither was making sure nothing bad ever happens.
No, my job is to take care of the life I’ve been given, not work around the clock making sure nothing goes wrong. And I think I’m ready to cut my hours.
