A few years ago, I was suffering intensely from pains in my stomach. I would awaken
two or three times each night, unable to sleep because of these terrific pains. I had
watched my father die from cancer of the stomach, and I feared that I too had a stomach
cancer-or, at least, stomach ulcers. So I went to Byrne's Clinic at Petosky, Michigan, for
an examination. Dr. Lilga, a stomach specialist, examined me with a fluoroscope and
took an X-ray of my stomach. He gave me medicine to make me sleep and assured me
that I had no stomach ulcers or cancer. My stomach pains, he said, were caused by
emotional strains. Since I am a minister, one of his first questions was: "Do you have an
old crank on your church board?"
He told me what I already knew; I was trying to do too much. In addition to my preaching
every Sunday and carrying the burdens of the various activities of the church, I was also
chairman of the Red Cross, president of the Kiwanis. I also conducted two or three
funerals each week and a number of other activities.
I was working under constant pressure. I could never relax. I was always tense, hurried,
and high-strung. I got to the point where I worried about everything. I was living in a
constant dither. I was in such pain that I gladly acted on Dr. Lilga's advice. I took
Monday off each week, and began eliminating various responsibilities and activities.
One day while cleaning out my desk, I got an idea that proved to be immensely helpful. I
was looking over an accumulation of old notes on sermons and other memos on matters
that were now past and gone. I crumpled them up one by one and tossed them into the
wastebasket. Suddenly I stopped and said to myself: "Bill, why don't you do the same
thing with your worries that you are doing with these notes? Why don't you crumple up
your worries about yesterday's problems and toss them into the wastebasket?" That one
idea gave me immediate inspiration-gave me the feeling of a weight being lifted from my
shoulders. From that day to this, I have made it a rule to throw into the wastebasket all
the problems that I can no longer do anything about.
Then, one day while wiping the dishes as my wife washed them, I got another idea. My
wife was singing as she washed the dishes, and I said to myself: "Look, Bill, how happy
your wife is. We have been married eighteen years, and she has been washing dishes
all that time. Suppose when we got married she had looked ahead and seen all the
dishes she would have to wash during those eighteen years that stretched ahead. That
pile of dirty dishes would be bigger than a barn. The very thought of it would have
appalled any woman."
Then I said to myself: "The reason my wife doesn't mind washing the dishes is because
she washes only one day's dishes at a time." I saw what my trouble was. I was trying to
wash today's dishes, yesterday's dishes and dishes that weren't even dirty yet.
I saw how foolishly I was acting. I was standing in the pulpit, Sunday mornings, telling
other people how to live, yet, I myself was leading a tense, worried, hurried existence. I
felt ashamed of myself.
Worries don't bother me any more now. No more stomach pains. No more insomnia. I
now crumple up yesterday's anxieties and toss them into the wastebasket, and I have
ceased trying to wash tomorrow's dirty dishes today.
Do you remember a statement quoted earlier in this book? "The load of tomorrow,
added to that of yesterday, carried today, makes the strongest falter." ... Why even try
it?