Up the Sunbeam

-- I come from a long line of worry warts. Both my grandmothers were masters of the art of fretting. My mother, to her credit, has greatly overcome many of her worrying tendencies by choosing to pray instead, but she would be the first to tell you that the worry gene is a tough one to overcome. When I left home at 18 to go to a Bible college 1200 miles from home, my fledgling ability to worry went into overdrive. Every time the phone rang, my imagination flashed a scene of hearing horrible news of a catastrophic car accident that had killed my entire family, leaving me alone in the world. If I was meeting someone and they were a few minutes late, I just knew they were dead in a ditch somewhere. I felt as though I was constantly one heartbeat away from being blindsided by tragedy. Somehow, worry felt like a small measure of control--if I worried about everything, at least if it did happen, it wouldn't take me by surprise. You hear the stories all the time--"I though...