I have recently completed the 2-week DEA sponsored undercover illicit drug training. The last speaker (right before the certification test) was Jack Harris (Ret-Tucson Police Department). Jack's presentation was a simple but important one. His main point was: change what you can control and choose to not worry about what you can not control.
This is an area that I have struggled with my entire career. It was very comforting knowing I am not the only one that strives to overcome this issue. I have caught myself many times getting anger over decisions that negatively affect me and my career, that I had no way to control. This can lead to bitterness and as a point of fact in every department there are a group of older officers that hate everything and everybody. They are the ones that lost this fight. When you strive hard to change the world and get beaten down in the process bitterness is often the result.
This is a Biblical principle also. God calls upon us to worry and strive to have our next small step to be as close to the step Jesus would have taken as we possibly can and not to worry about the 20th step. The long term plans are for God to ponder if we just make the best step each time we will arrive at the destination that God intended. Railing at what we can not control will only lead to frustration leading to anger then leading to bitterness and bitterness is deadly, not only for us but for all who care about us.
Matthew 6:25-27
Do Not Worry
25"Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more important than food, and the body more important than clothes? 26Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they? 27Who of you by worrying can add a single hour to his life[a]?
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