When you get tense, you worry. When you worry, you get tense. Cast off worry and tension both. They are tightness. They hold onto fear. Worry and tenseness act as if you can control all of life. You can influence, but not control. Fear not. In any case, life will play itself out. What has been started will take its course. What has been started will finish.

Be easy with life rather than fretting about what has happened or might happen. Imagine yourself in a hammock with Me. Let’s have a conversation. Let’s look up at the tree above and beyond that to the sky and beyond that to an image of Heaven so serene that you, too, can only be serene. Why would anyone choose worry over serenity? But is that not what you have done and perhaps are doing right now?

Be at peace with life. Be at peace with your life. You do not own your life on Earth, beloveds. It is yours only for a little while. Making the most of it means to enjoy it. You do not own your life, and you certainly don’t own another’s life.

When you go fishing, you let the line you cast be loose. Can you not do the same with your life? Can you let go of it and just see what happens? I say this in contrast to your being fraught with life. You don’t have to pick life up and shake it. You don’t have to carve it out. You don’t have to bone it. Just live it. Let life be what it is and not mind it so much. Govern yourself but not your life so much. If you would change your life, change how you react to it. If your teeth are clenched and your fists are clenched, what are you doing to yourself? Open your arms to life instead.

Instead of fearing, think about the good that is to come. Think about goodness. You don’t have to think about mercy. Thinking about mercy means you are thinking about a difficult scenario. Be merciful to yourself and know that you do not have to pander to life. You do not have to beg for mercy. Anticipate good wherever you go. Conjure it up. Draw in your heart the picture of all of life greeting you in a friendly fashion, welcoming your presence, sitting down beside you and holding your hand.

What if that which you fear turns out to be a friend? Compose yourself differently. Make friends with life instead of worrying about it. You have guests coming to stay with you that you have not yet met. Roll out the red carpet. Prepare good meals. Set the table. Perhaps the king and queen of life are coming to visit you. Perhaps they are coming laden with gifts. Do not think that life is coming to rob you. Consider how you will welcome it with a warm heart.

And if a difficult guest of life arrives, you can still give great courtesy, and you may find that the guest is not so difficult as you at first thought. You can engage with even difficult guests in life. They do not stay forever, and you may even find that your good nature changes events.

You do not know ahead of time what gifts wanted or unwanted guests in life will bring. You can know you will greet what life brings equally and with great courtesy. You can know the ease and gifts you will give.