Fret

Fret            November 2017

There are two definitions for “fret” which outwardly have nothing to do with each other.  The first is continually worrying over something, e.g. “he fretted that the Chargers would go to Los Angeles.”  The second is the little embedded metal bars on the neck of a guitar that define different notes to some degree.   The first is a verb and the second is a noun.  When I fret it is often in the evening before going to bed.  That fret divides the days of my life the same way the guitar’s frets divide the different notes.

The mind’s fretting has no purpose while the guitar’s frets do.  The first is a vapor, useless, and a complete waste of time.  The second is solid, functional, and economic.  Fretting does not make another dollar, swap a flat tire on a car, improve your health, or change the other person’s mind the way that the guitar’s frets change the tune.

Benjamin Franklin said, “Be cheerful – the problems that worry us most are those that never arrive.”

Corrie Ten Boom, “Worry does not empty tomorrow of its sorrows.  It empties today of its strength.”

Amelia Earhart, “Decide whether or not the goal is worth the risks involved.  If it is then stop worrying.”

Saul, on the day before he was to be anointed the first King of Israel, was searching for some animals which belonged to his father.  He said to his servant, “Come, let us go back, or my father will stop thinking about the lost donkeys and start worrying about us.”  Can you imagine how ridiculous his father’s concerns would have been in light of what was about to happen in his family.  It was like going from quarterback of the high school football team to the President of the United States in one jump.  In  a relative way, his father would have worried about comparatively nothing.

Tomorrow we celebrate by cooking a turkey, which may or may not get done “on time.”  We will bake dinner rolls which might not rise to the occasion.  Uncle Edward may tell that story about Iwo Jima one more time.  The neighbor’s dog could bark all the way through the meal like last year.  The power might go out like it did in that big wind storm in 1996.  OR

Everything might be just fine!  All those concerns won’t stop the neighbor’s dog any more than it will stop Uncle Edward.  So enjoy the day you have before you because people don’t remember the wedding or the Thanksgiving that went perfectly, do they?