I am so blessed to have Green Grandma here today to share this amazing post. I hope that you will pause a moment after reading it to visit her wonderful blog and read about her new book Vinegar Fridays.

She truly is a wonderful writer and storyteller.

“I’m going back to Iraq,” my brand-new son-in-law said.

I stopped breathing. Tom and our daughter, Bethany, informed us they had something they needed to tell us and as we sat around the dining room table with hopes of a grandbaby on the way or something else equally wonderful, a cloak of worry descended upon me.

“My unit’s been deployed,” the Marine sergeant continued, “and I volunteered to go with them.”

I couldn’t speak. Fear gripped me with its threat of impending doom. After all, I was widowed at just 32. Was history going to repeat itself? Would my daughter hug her husband goodbye, never to see him again?

I was scared.

For the next month, I struggled to sleep. I worried constantly. I played out scenes in my head – the knock on my daughter’s door, the primal scream, I knew too well, emerging from the depths of her soul. I rushing to get there to offer her comfort that was impossible to give. My own collapsed onto the floor as I heard the news. Would he be killed, or would he come home severely maimed, altering their lives forever?

I had this worrying thing down to an art.

One day, as I ripped the previous day’s saying from my inspirational page-a-day calendar, I read these words:

I paused and read it again. Something started to happen in me … I could feel it. I started to weep.

At that moment, my life changed. Dramatically. Hopefully, forever.

As a writer, I never take for granted the gift of imagination with which God blessed me. After all, what fiction writer can be without it? It is a necessary tool of our trade; one with which, I believe, we are born. God planted the desire to write in me from the time I was a small child. Imagination. What a blessed gift! A gift I turned into a curse.

Before my first husband was killed in a flash fire, I worried about him all the time. If he was ten minutes late, I was pacing. For fifteen minutes, I was crying. Twenty minutes, I was calling the local hospitals. What a rotten way to live … for both of us. I was just so worried that he was going to die. And he did. Worrying did not prevent his death; it simply made his life with me a bit on edge. That is something I will regret forever.

Quite honestly, however, I didn’t know I had a choice.

“I’m just a worrier,” I would say, excusing this flaw in my character as an inborn trait I had no control over. “It’s just the way I am.”

The fact is I did have control over this character flaw. We all do. We can choose not to worry. For me, it was as simple as realizing I was misusing the gift God gave me. I admit it — I have a rather vivid imagination … and I was wasting it on worrying.

That morning, over five years ago, I came up with this strategy:

When I start to feel anxious, I ask myself this question – Am I projecting into the future and imaging things that might happen, or is this a legitimate concern that requires some action on my part?

If there is no real basis for my worry, I dismiss it. If, on the other hand, I’m concerned about catching a cold or whether or not I paid a bill, I proactively take steps to alleviate the concern. I take extra vitamins or wash my hands more often or check my online bank statement to see if the payment went through. Do you see the difference? A concern often requires action.

There was nothing I could do to keep my son-in-law safe. No amount of sleepless nights would prevent my daughter from early widowhood. So I rode out Tom’s deployment in prayer for him, leaving his safety in the hands of his Heavenly Father and leaving my worry in His hands, too. After all, He’s God, and He was more than happy to take it off me.

And you know what? Tom made it home safely and is now co-parenting an active little boy who, no doubt, will challenge this ‘no worry’ approach to life his grandma has. But for now, I’m worrying less and enjoying life more … letting my imagination lead me into the wonderful world of fiction.