The What If Walrus

Photo by Jay Ruzesky on Unsplash

Back in the days before cell phones, Derek would occasionally come home late from work without calling me first, and I would panic.  What if he had crashed?  And died?  He would get home to a distraught and somewhat angry wife.  He didn't have to be very late for me to panic either -- just 5 or 10 minutes.

I was reminded of this when I was reading the Book of Mormon this morning.  Lehi had sent off all four of his and Sariah's sons to get the brass plates.  The boys weren't back as soon as Sariah thought they should be, and she panicked.  What if they were hurt?  Or had died?  She said things that were not particularly kind.  She was angry.  Lehi tried to comfort her, but it wasn't until the boys arrived back on the scene that she really felt better.
(There wasn't even a helpful landline type phone back then!)

All of this had me remembering a story that I used to read to my girls about Walrus.  Walrus wanted to learn to ride a bike, but he was plagued by all of the "what ifs"  that he came up with.  So many horrible things were possible, and he probably would hurt himself, and be life flighted, and fall out of the helicopter and die!

Granted, this story is different -- he was worried about himself getting hurt and maybe dying -- but he was paralyzed by his fear, just like Sariah and I were stuck in ours, not moving out of the fear until we knew our loved ones were safe.

Walrus did try riding a bike, and he did fall.  He also learned to ride that bike.  When we are feeling afraid, wouldn't it be nice to be able to just pull out the confidence that God is with us, and no matter what happens He will still be with us? Walrus had friends who helped him when he fell off of his bike, and we will have help when we face hard things too.  Worrying in advance over the what ifs just paralyzes us, and doesn't help us now, or later.