As I read the quote, “We are more often frightened than hurt; and we suffer more from imagination than from reality,” this morning — my childhood experience with stitches emerged from my memory bank.
Our minds are often so filled with fears that are never realized. We fret for hours, days, weeks, months and even years about things that never happen.
My mom use to drill the concept of “buying trouble” into my mind. “Jen, the more you think about something and fear it, the more likely it may happen,” she’d explain. “Your thoughts affect your actions and then there’s no turning back.”
Even up to the last days of her life during her cancer battle, she’d school me on this concept.
For example, I’d walk into the room and she’d be so quiet. My imagination would make me believe she wasn’t breathing anymore. Her eyes would snap open and she’d say something sarcastic.
“I’m not dead, Jen! I’m perfectly fine!”
Her reactions were strangely funny, and we’d both giggle a bit. Then she’d give me a lecture about not being so scared of what was going on in her body.
“What are you going to do when I’m gone? You’d better get your head screwed on straight.”
She was right.
As the weeks went by during her sickness, I was increasingly infused with the strength I needed to get through it all. Things got tougher for her. Sometimes she’d panic and ask for me to pray with her — just as she did during my first bout with stitches.