How Winning the War on Worry Changed My Quiet Time

I have led the Tuesday morning women's Bible study at my church in Conway, Arkansas, for about twelve years now. You would think a person who teaches others to trust God would have worry figured out. I did not. Somewhere in my late fifties, after a stretch of burnout, worry moved in like a relative who forgot to leave.

My quiet time had become a checklist. I sat in my recliner by the living room window at six in the morning, coffee in hand, Bible open, and my mind running everywhere except where it should. I worried about our grown children, about Glenn's retirement, about whether I was doing enough. I told myself this was just how a responsible woman thinks. It was not. It was worry wearing a church face.

A friend from the Tuesday group handed me a copy of Winning the War on Worry by Louie Giglio. I almost thanked her and set it aside. Another book about peace, I thought. But she said the chapters were short and the questions were honest, so I started reading it the next morning at six.

The first chapter did not tell me to stop worrying. It told me something better: worry is a war, and wars are won with practice, not with willpower. That one idea changed how I opened my Bible each morning.

I want to be honest about one thing. The book did not make me a different person overnight. It made me a more honest one. I stopped pretending I was not afraid and started bringing the fear into my quiet time instead of leaving it at the door.

I had been trying to win the war on worry with my own grip. Louie Giglio kept pointing me back to whose hands I was already in.

What surprised me was how practical it was. Louie Giglio does not wave at worry from a distance. He walks right into the middle of it and shows you what the Bible actually says about fear, about tomorrow, about the voice that tells you to rehearse disaster. I found myself underlining things I had read for years but never connected.

I started using the book in my quiet time instead of just reading it. At six in the morning I would read one short chapter, then sit with the questions before I even opened my devotional. Some mornings I wrote in the margins. Some mornings I just sat. After about three weeks, Glenn said I seemed lighter at breakfast. I knew what he meant. The worry was still there at times, but it was no longer running the house.

One morning stands out. Glenn and I had been talking about visiting our daughter and her family, and I caught myself rehearsing every possible problem with the trip. I opened the book to a chapter about tomorrow and read a line that stopped me: worry borrows trouble from a day you have not been given yet. I closed the book and sat with that for a while.

The Tuesday morning group noticed too. I did not turn the study into a book club, but I started sharing one line from my reading when we opened our time together. Within a few weeks, three of the women bought their own copies. That is when I realized this was not just a book for me. It was a book for the whole table.

I am sixty-one now, and I have learned that I will probably always be the kind of woman who needs to be reminded. The difference is I know where the reminder lives. I keep Winning the War on Worry on the little table beside my recliner, and on the mornings when my mind starts racing before my feet hit the floor, I reach for it.

I still have hard mornings. I still catch my mind running ahead to things I cannot control. But now I have a place to take it. That is what the book gave me, not a perfect mind, but a chair to come back to.

What Changed in My Tuesday Morning Group

The women in my Tuesday group started asking what I was reading. I did not make it a formal study, but I began each session with one short reading and a simple question: where does this find you this week? That question changed the room. Women who usually stayed quiet started talking.

We did not need to agree on every point. We just needed to be honest about where worry had its grip on us. One woman said she had been anxious about her mother's health for months and had never told anyone in the room. Another said she worried about money even though she knew God had provided before. By the end of the hour, we were praying for each other by name. That does not happen with a to-do list quiet time.

What I'd Tell You If We Were Sitting at My Kitchen Table

If you came over for coffee, I would not hand you a list of ten steps. I would tell you that peace is not a feeling you chase. It is a place you keep returning to. Louie Giglio helped me see that I had been fighting worry with worry, trying to think my way out of fear instead of handing it over. Start small. Read one chapter in the morning. Do not try to fix your whole mind in a week. Just show up at six with your coffee and let the words do their work. And if you miss a morning, start again the next one. That is the whole war, really: not winning once, but coming back to the chair.