I Wish I'd Known This Earlier

Call me Mrs. Anxiety.  I was always one of those worrying types; always looking at the negative and never the positive.  As a teenager I thought it was funny.  I used to say if there was a two percent chance of getting hit by lightning, I'd surely be in that two percent.  But if there was a 98 percent chance of winning something, I'd never win.  I'd be in that two percent that loses.
 
So, here I was living my life seeing only the bad in things.  I saw what it was doing to me but I just couldn't stop.  I hung on to a bad job because I was afraid.  I let my father run me crazy because I was afraid.  And yet God does not give us fear.  He tells us that we have power over everything.  Yet I was powerless.
Then I made a change in my life, and decided I would let go of the fear and just get out there.  I left my job and got a new one.  And I let my father know he could no longer scare me.  I learned how to tune the negatives out and let the positives flow.  And flow it did.  Seems no matter what happens to me, I'm still landing on my feet.  Still feeling good.  I've learned to take a deep breath, live in the moment, and let God handle it.  And it all started when a man on television pointed something out to me.  He said that we live in the past and the future, but never the present.
This was certainly true of me.  My father, for example.  He's made bad choices in his life.  And I feared for his mental state.  I'd think of the past and say he's insane.  I'd worry about what he'll do to others if I were not around.  I ran around, trying to get help for him, but had the door slammed at every turn.  I then feared the future.  What if it's progressive, I'd think.  I'd spend nights thinking about what was going to happen or what had happen.  
Then I moved to the present.  Because in the present, nothing was happening.  He'd huff and puff, but that's all it was.  I'd let his threats control me.  But when I decided that I could do nothing about the past or the future but turn it over to God, I became free.  I started living.  Now what he says means that his calls go to voice mail and my blood pressure stays normal.  
Same with my job.  It wasn't a good job but I feared what would happen if I left.  Thing was, lots was happening because I stayed.  I had  high-blood pressure and lived in fear of not making a sale, and thus losing my job.  I'd go back to the past and think of all who'd been fired before me.  Then I'd see  myself with no insurance, my life devastated because I'l lost my job.
Then I did leave my job, not because I was fired, but because I saw it for the life-sucking creature it was.  My fear of the future, of not having health insurance was solved by the Affordable Care act.  The fact that I have a pre-existing condition means nothing now, so all those years of sleepless nights were for naught.  
 
So now I'm free to live my life.  Fear no longer controls me.  Wow!  I can't tell you how good it feels to finally breathe.