HOW GRANNY DEALT WITH WORRY  
Ben Boothe  

It was the Christmas of 1987. Most of the family was in the kitchen, eating and playing a table game. Uncle Jim, Granny, and I were in the den.

"Sometimes, I am so lonely!" said Uncle Jim. "Often, I will turn on the T. V. just to be with someone... And at night, problems all become larger. When I awake at 3:00 or 4:00 a.m., it is scary and I worry. Now I understand my Dad. When I was a little child in west Texas, I would hear him get up at night, walk around the house. He worried so that he would become physically sick and I could hear him in the bathroom. As a child, I didn't understand it—but now I do!"

And I answered, "My life is that way. Sometimes it seems that I carry a bundle on my shoulders all of the time. Every problem seems so heavy to bear."

Then Granny spoke up. She hadn't said much all night. She was in her eighties, old and shrunken. But her mind still full of vivid memories. She still loved a good story and better still a good laugh. And she wasn't about to let this negative line of thought continue.

"You boys speak of how hard your lives are, and how you worry. My life was hard. Stuck on that dry land farm out in west Texas. Why, I carried a baby on my back and picked a bale of cotton one day just so I could have enough money to buy clothes to keep my boys warm. While I was picking cotton, I laid Jim Bob (then a baby) in the field on the ground because I couldn't carry him and the cotton sack too. Later I went to check on him and there was a big rattlesnake crawling right up to him. It just made me sick with fear. You know what I did? I killed that snake and went about my business! We had a life to live."

"My husband was a worrier and time and again. I'd tell him, 'Noel, we'll work it out'...and you know what happened? Every time, we did. Just like that snake. Deal with the problem—worrying doesn't help—everything will work out."

There it was. A clarion call—a message from the past to the present that the wisest philosopher couldn't beat. My old gray Granny teaching her son, and grandson to stop feeling sorry for themselves and not fall into the destructive and unproductive rut of worry and fear. I admired my Granny so much that Christmas night—I took her little body in my arms and held her tight to my side. She looked up and smiled and said, "Now remember, things will all work out, you listen to your Granny." And we laughed together. Because Granny loved to laugh.--9800 Verna Trail North, Fort Worth, Texas 76108

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Worry is interest paid on trouble before it becomes due.-- Dean Inge

The reason why worry kills more people than work is that more people worry than work. --Robert Frost