By Joe Pisani
When my father got into Alcoholics Anonymous after 40 years of drinking, one of the first things they told him was to stop living a 72-hour day. One day at a time. Just for today. Otherwise, before he knew it, he’d be right back on the path to self-destruction.
When you’re living a 72-hour day, you have one foot in the past and one foot in the future even though both feet should be firmly planted in the present. To stay sober, you have to concentrate on the day that God gives you. That’s why God gives us our lives one moment at a time, and in that one moment lie all the trials, sufferings and joys that we’re meant to experience. Or as Jesus said in the Sermon on the Mount, “Let the day’s own trouble be sufficient for the day.”
I’ve discovered from personal experience that when you attach the past and the future to your day, things can get out of control in a big way. A 72-hour day is more than we’re meant to live. It’s not manageable. If we take up our cross each day, we’ll be able to carry it, but a cross that’s two times heavier is more than God expects us to carry.
One of my family members, who shall go unnamed, is always nursing a past resentment or worrying about a future calamity. She spends her life like the Roman god Janus who had two faces, one looking back and one looking forward. She still remembers what So&So did to her two years ago, and she worries about having to deal with a co-worker on an assignment that won’t start for weeks. I confess that she probably got this habit from me.
More nights than I care to remember, I’ve lain awake staring at the ceiling, worrying about paying bills or how I would deal with a problem at work. And if I wasn’t preoccupied with an uncertain future, I was obsessed with an unchangeable past, agonizing over arguments or insults, regretting things I’d done or failed to do or wished I’d done differently. So often, we all fret over sins we committed and already asked Jesus to forgive. (Belaboring past sins is an insult to Jesus and his infinite mercy. When he forgives our sins, he forgets them, so brooding over them shows a lack of faith.)
Of course, anxiety about the future isn’t unique to our troubled age. That was one of the many things Jesus spoke about while he was on Earth. In the Sermon on the Mount, he was pretty explicit when he said: “Therefore I tell you, do not be anxious about your life, what you shall eat or what you shall drink, nor about your body, what you shall put on. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing? Look at the birds of the air: they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they? … Therefore do not be anxious about tomorrow, for tomorrow will be anxious for itself.”
For me, that is easier said than done. I have to pray for the grace to live a day at a time –or a moment at a time when things get really out of control. Fear and anxiety destroy the joy that Jesus wants us to experience and share with others.
Always remember that if the present is difficult, Jesus is there. And if the future is difficult, he’ll be there too. The most important thing we can do, and perhaps one of the hardest, is to trust Jesus without hesitation or reservation.
The Sisters of Life composed a wonderful prayer called the Litany of Trust, which recognizes the importance of not obsessing about the past or the future and of turning our will and our lives over to care of God. It says in part:
“From anxiety about the future, deliver me, Jesus.
From resentment or excessive preoccupation with the past, deliver me, Jesus.
From restless self-seeking in the present moment, deliver me, Jesus…
That not knowing what tomorrow brings is an invitation to lean on you, Jesus, I trust in you.
That you are always with me in my suffering, Jesus, I trust in you.”
(Joe Pisani is a freelance writer from Orange. He can be reached at joefpisani@yahoo.com.)