Even Worry Is a Kind of Grace

Lately, worry has settled over me like a constant companion. Right now, it takes the shape of house hunting—offers made and lost, viewings that blur together, the ache of disappointment each time we walk away empty-handed.

And yet, when I pause long enough and take a step back, I realize: even this is itself a privilege. To be restless over which home will be ours means we have come to a place my past self could hardly have imagined. To even stand at the threshold of ownership is a gift once too distant to name.

I remember when John first arrived in New Zealand. Even securing a small rental was a struggle. Stability felt fragile, and home ownership was a dream too far off to grasp. Today, our frustration is not in whether we can have a home, but in which one will hold our future. What an extraordinary shift that is.

This isn’t the first time I’ve forgotten the blessing behind the worry. I remember, too, those long months of preparing our migration documents. Every form carried the weight of hope; every delay felt like the edge of collapse. That anxiety once pressed so heavily on my heart. And yet, it was that very worry that delivered us here, to this life we are now building.

Work has been the same. I’ve grumbled about long days and looming deadlines, forgetting the uncertainty of the times when secure employment felt just out of reach. How quickly the newer, lighter burdens of today replace the once-impossible struggles of yesterday.

And so I remind myself: the worries I carry now are often the very things I once prayed for. Gratitude, if I let it, can turn frustration into perspective. My worries, though loud and insistent, are also quiet testaments to growth. They mark not just the challenges of the present, but the distance already traveled.

Perhaps worry can never be erased—it is stitched too closely into the fabric of being human. But it can be softened, reframed. And when I see it this way, even worry—strange, stubborn companion that it is—becomes something worth being thankful for.