Wayne Lomax is the Retired Pastor of The Fountain Church in Miami Gardens, Florida. He currently serves as a Compliance Manager for Miami Dade County Public Schools and is the President of The Fountain Endowed Legacy Scholarship Fund
To say that these are anxious times is an understatement. A dual-tank semi-truck could cost $2,000 or more to fill with diesel fuel. If you have children in the public schools, you might find it a challenge to locate the homework on Canvas, Focus, and Clever. The cost of college and the shifts in the job market make decisions about one’s profession speculative.
This is no longer the Age of Aquarius. This is the age of anxiety. From the rising of the sun to the going down of the same, anxiety is everywhere: getting out of bed early enough to adequately prepare for the day; driving to work or school late in bumper-to-bumper traffic; giving your child a mobile phone that can reach mature sites when you have limited tech skills to protect her or him from early exposure; the high cost of food at the grocery store and in restaurants. Each of these scenes is a potential source of anxiety.
Every now and then, you should unplug and relax. A smart person once said, “Nothing has meaning except the meaning we assign to it.” This is absolutely true. Around 1822, Harriet Tubman was born into slavery. By 1849, she had redefined her identity and her destiny without money or miracles. She simply thought differently, and consequently, she behaved differently. That change in thought and behavior converted her past anxiety into a future that could not have been foreseen. How?
Well, I cannot be certain without speaking to Ms. Tubman, but we can discern from her biographies that (1) her faith in God was greater than her concern about her circumstances, (2) her inner strength was stronger than her external situation, and (3) her belief in her exceptionality was superior to what others believed about her. This is inner work. This is detachment from the temporal. So try it every now and then.