Article July 20, 1998 Issue

Conquering the fear of being late

By Jane K. Mercereau

I've always hated being late. As a child I loved school, but I would rather have been absent than tardy. As an adult, I was never late, but this practice actually wasted time because I accomplished it by being anxious and extremely early. Later, as a wife and mother, I learned that not everyone's schedule worked in exact synchronization with mine—to put it mildly. So how did I get over this obsession with tardiness?

Through prayer. Prayer not only lessened the anxiety of being late, but also the occasions of tardiness. And how does prayer help with tardiness? It changes our thinking, which in turn changes our lives. Prayer smooths out the events of daily life; it brings harmonious thought and action. Science and Health explains, "Prayer cannot change the Science of being, but it tends to bring us into harmony with it" (p. 2). The fretfulness over not meeting self-imposed time constraints vanishes in the light of prayer.

We're accustomed to thinking of ourselves as attempting to fulfill tasks we've been given or we've given ourselves, each having its own specific deadline. But what if there's something else going on entirely?

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