Sound of Surviving Blog

I just recently took and passed my exam to become a Certified Therapeutic Recreation Specialist. For months leading up to it, I was terrified of taking this exam, terrified that I wouldn’t pass. That I’d be too far removed from my schooling, having graduated back in 2023. While I studied for months on end, for hours at a time, the thought and fear of not passing still lurked in my head, especially as the exam grew closer. I had my mom help me study the day before the test, just to quiz me, to make sure I knew what I needed to, and even with her affirmation that I knew what I was talking about in regards to all the terms and theories I needed to know, I was still so fearful of taking this exam.

After asking multiple friends and family members to keep me in their prayers for me to do well on my exam, I headed off to take it, still feeling the tiniest bit unsure. I just kept reminding myself the whole way there that God was with me, and that he would give me the strength and the courage and the endurance to do well on my exam. Once I started the exam, I realized a lot of the questions I knew, and the ones I wasn’t really sure on, I gave it my best educated guess, and left the rest in God’s hands. I think a lot of times, in life, we worry about something and we let the devil trick us into thinking it will never work out, when in reality, if we just trust God, and remember that he is for us, and not against us, we’d see that he always works everything out for us. In 2 Timothy 1:7, we’re reminded, “God gave us a spirit not of fear, but of power and love, and self-control”. The words “Do not fear” appear 365 times in the bible, a whole year’s worth of daily reminders to us not to worry or be afraid. I was so worried about whether or not I would pass my exam, I actually almost put it off, thinking maybe I needed more time to study. But if I had just reminded myself to focus on God and his promises, I would have saved myself from a whole lot of stress.

You see, worry takes our focus off of God, because instead of trusting in him, that he can do all things, we are instead forgetting his will for and role for our lives, and focusing instead on what could go wrong. And instead of getting to experience God’s will for us, we miss out on the good things that he has in store for us because we’re too busy worrying about what Satan is telling us might go wrong, when it might not.

The thing is, while worry is a normal thing for humans to experience, and we are only human, and we will experience it, even if we know God. But as Paul states in Hebrews 13:5-6: “For he has said, ‘I will never leave you nor forsake you.”  So, we can confidently say, “The Lord is my helper; I will not fear; what can man do to me?” That doesn’t mean we won’t worry about anything in our lives, but when we do, it means that we can look to God and trust that he’s walking next to us, working everything for our good.