Our friend George Dunn joined us as he normally does for our Thursday morning conversation. George is pretty popular at the free store, in part because he brings at least a dozen Krispy Kreme donuts each time that he comes. Beyond this he is very generous and does what he can to support his friends. We refer to him now as the loaves and fishes guy. George has a great sense of humor and always gives us something challenging and inspiring to think about.
Our friend Donald was first in line for the donuts, but as we have seen before just how many the man can consume we had to limit him to just one. It was all in good fun and Donald knows that we care about him and he was able to laugh as we teased him about it.
George started the conversation by telling us that heart disease is the number one killer in our country. And that hypertension is the number one cause of heart disease. And that anxiety is the number one cause of hypertension. George told us that he has had three heart attacks and the last one was nearly fatal but through it he came away with a new sense of purpose and meaning for his life. He suggested that the way to best deal with anxiety is to learn to trust in God rather than government, medicine, or social security. George always has a bit of a twinkle in his eye as he says such things.
We talked a bit about how ironic it is that as a country we have so much wealth and yet so little health and happiness. Collectively we probably take more Prozac and other antidepressants than any other place in the world. One of our friends said that the more you have the more that you have to lose and the more that you have to worry about.
A new friend told us that she suffered from very severe panic attacks. She said that she was trusting God and taking some medication for it and hoped to get it under control. She said that it was very scary and yet she was hopeful that her condition would improve. Our friend Paul talked about his anxiety over being diagnosed with atrial fibrillation which runs in his family and that he knows it can be fatal. It was sobering to realize as we listened to our friends that there are very real and legitimate reasons for our fears and anxieties.
This led one of our friends to talk about how our anxieties can be irrational at times as well. He told us about his son Jon who is deathly afraid of zombies and refused to go outside after dark the other night to get the mail even though he thought it might contain a video game he was expecting. This made us laugh as we realized that our minds can manufacture things to be worried about even when there is no real threat.
We concluded our conversation with a discussion about how we can throw a pity party for ourselves as we face adverse circumstances. This is the classic question we throw at God as we rail against the cruel universe, "Don't you care about us?" Or we can learn what it means to trust God as a way to manage our anxieties and learn to live without disabling anxiety and fear. This is the classic question that God asks us as we sob and bluster, "Don't you trust me?"
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