We had popsicles for breakfast, fruit juice popsicles, but popsicles nonetheless. We are all sick, to one degree or another. Our daughter started feeling out of sorts on Wednesday and by last night, my entire family had symptoms. My son was the worst off with a sore throat, headache, and joint pain. His glands were swollen and he had a fever of 103 before the Tylenol. That's enough to cause a parent to worry. If his sister didn't seem to be getting better, we would have likely taken him to the after-hours folks. Right now, we're all curled up in front of a warm DVD player with Monsters Inc. It helps to laugh at something, especially when you're feeling awful. "Kitty!"

Worry is something that parents do naturally. It's a talent all parents can easily develop. You can usually spot someone who knows how to worry about their kids by the way they pace. The truly good ones get knots in their stomachs. It always helps if you have children who have been hospitalized for sickness, or worse, a freak ailment claim the child of someone you know. For a lot of parents, this is an ailment with no cure. Thankfully, we're not without help, or hope.

For some, trusting God is window dressing for their worry. It's a cover for prayerful worry. Others sincerely battle between trusting God and their own desire to control the situation. I've been in both of these states. It's not fun. However, one way I've found not to worry is to find someplace where I'm not distracted and quiet the mental chatter of worry long enough to truly listen and hear God's voice, the still, small one so many people talk about. If I don't hear Him, I usually just wait until He does speak. I test the spirits, like the Bible tells us to, but I've come to know His voice and trust what He says as accurate.

Does He always tell me it's okay? No. When Savannah was dying, I was driving to the hospital where she was, asking God how I should pray. He told me to pray for her father. I knew by His tone that Savannah was already gone. I got to the hospital and I knew immediately that what I realized in the car was true. This is not some psychological method of self-comfort. But whatever he says, it's always been right, even if it didn't seem to make sense at the time.

I guess I need to listen to my own advice. I want desperately to get out of the financial situation we're in. The secular notion of pulling yourself up by your bootstraps appeals to me more than I ever realized. But that's not what this trusted voice says. This trusted voice tells me that He's got something better than what I could produce on my own and to trust Him. That last part is the toughest. It's not something you can just allow to happen. I remember teaching my youth that trusting is more than talk. I did the "trust exercise" where I had one student climb up on the table and fall straight back into the arms of their peers. They understood -- I hope, anyway -- that you can talk about falling and trusting someone to catch you, you can even practice and "almost-trust." But until you hit the PNR -- the Point of No Return, you're really just talking about it. In the trust exercise, it's where the student cannot stop themselves from falling backward. There's a PNR for everything a person can trust God for. After we reach that PNR, we're committed.

Yet, trusting Him is a process of falling over and over again, getting into the habit of trusting. And even then, there is always the temptation to seize control and refuse. Maybe we're tired of falling, maybe we're frustrated that nothing seems to be happening, or that things are happening that are taking us away from where we want to go. Maybe we just react to what's happening around us. Trusting is so hard sometimes. But it beats an ulcer and stressing out. He knows what He's doing. I just have to listen and follow.

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