Partly Cloudy with Scattered Worries

Partly Cloudy with Scattered WorriesAuthor: Kathy Collard Miller
Publisher: Bethany House
ISBN: 0-7642-0025-9

Featuring:
Excerpt from Sins of a Father, Forgiving the Unforgivable
by Kitty Chappell
(excerpt below)

 

 

 


Kitty Chappell gives us a wonderful way to resist Satan and be steadfast. She writes in Sins of a Father: Forgiving the Unforgivable about how she worried when she left her children at home when she accompanied her husband on trips for their business. Even though they were with capable baby-sitters, she envisioned all sorts of horrible things happening. But then something occurred that gave her the power to go in the opposite direction. She had to go to her chiropractor for an injured back and was in too much pain to relax long enough to receive an adjustment.
She writes,

After a couple of unsuccessful attempts, he said, “Wiggle the toes on your right foot.” When I wiggled my toes, he made the adjustment-without pain.

“Why did I have to wiggle my toes?” I asked.

“When you concentrated on wiggling your toes,” he explained, “your focus shifted from your pain to your toes. You relaxed and I could make the adjustment.”

Driving home, I thought, Why wouldn’t the “wiggle your toes” principle work in other areas?

I had read or heard somewhere that worry is merely negative imagination. Could I break the chain of worry by substituting positive imagination for the negative? When we left on our next trip and the old negative thought patterns began to play, I changed tactics. I substituted positive “what ifs” for the usual negatives.

What if, while we are gone, the babysitter is watching the children playing in the front yard and a kind white-haired gentleman walks by and stops to chat with them? He is a lonely widower with no children nor grandchildren of his own. Our kids really take to him. The babysitter carefully observes him and decides he’s just a harmless, kind, lonely old man who loves children. He chats with them for a while and then resumes his walk.

I build this scenario to the point that when we return home, we become friends with the kind old man and adopt him into our family circle. Several years later, he dies and leaves a fortune to our children. (And we had thought he was penniless!) Our children’s college education was secured. Our son became a surgeon and our daughter an attorney.

Wait a minute, my logical mind interjects. This is a stupid story! Just because you are gone on a business trip, you think that’s going to happen? Not likely! But I, now knowing that I have the power to wiggle my mental toes and break the negative focus, reply, That’s true. But neither is it likely that my house is going to burn down just because I am gone.

After our second trip, I was free of the negative worries-forever. I received more than a manipulation that freed me from physical pain that day at the chiropractor’s office. I discovered a method of attitude adjustment that freed me from a lifetime of mental and emotional pain.

* * *

Excerpt published in Kathy Collard Miller’s book Partly Cloudy with Scattered Worries (Finding Peace in all Kinds of Weather), released by Bethany House Publishers in 2005 (p 99)

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