Can I talk with you...alone?

That is just one of the phrases that drives my anxiety up.  It doesn't matter where or under what circumstances.  The intimation is that there is something amiss.  My daughter Sara used it once for the time she was caught (in high school) smoking a cigar with a friend in the boiler room of the school.  I had to maintain a straight face and attend to the situation at hand but did well.  Other reasons for the statement go from "your zipper is open" to "this event is so boring; can we leave?" to "I didn't want to alarm the children but I'm leaving you."  You have your memories of the times you have heard the phrase yourself.  That one phrase reminds us that we don't really have the control and safety of anything.  It's one thing to hear that there is a surprise party being planned and you are part of the planning and another thing to hear the news that your brother/sister have cancer.  The only thing worse is to have that foreboding feeling that someone is going to use the phrase with you.  We live in a world where bad things and good things take place all the time.  Yet we don't stress with the positive.  It's always the negative that ruin our day, month or year.  Since this experience isn't going to go away I suggest we do something about it.  That doesn't mean we resign ourselves to the situation in defeat.  Nor does it mean we embrace all the negativity.  What it means to you and I may be different but our needs are the same.  Our need is to have peace in our life and the lives of others we care about.  This is very much easier said than done.  I've given suggestions, answers, and confrontations for many of my careers to others who brought me these problems.  I find myself giving advice that is applicable to me but I can't or don't seem to find the way in applying the same answers.  Hence we come into contact with the second problem.  That is the lack of desire to change things in our lives.  We imagine all the hassles and fears that encompass any change we may make in our lives.  Yet, the necessity of those changes weighs heavily on us. Trust of others surfaces as a source of our addressing issues in our lives and changes.  We fear the loss of this or that person.  People have the right to leave relationships whether I like it or not.  At one particular time in my life (horrible loss) I asked my good friend if they could be there with and for me as I walked through the loss.  Their reply was "No, I can't be there for you."  After the shock wore off I made it through the grief and never heard from or saw the friend again.  How could I have seen that coming?  Often we don't see the issues coming.  We wake up to another sunny delightful day and then receive THAT phone call telling me that my dad has died, my mom has cancer, that my sisters have cancer, that...you can see your own lives here.  Nothing prepares us for some things.  And some things there is no preparation that can be done.  It was and is a constant (though less frequent) event in my life.  Checking out isn't in the equation as the problem remains whether we are there to confront it or not.  Delaying serves no purpose as well as denial.  What can help?  The simple and complex answer is Jesus.  "Jesus loves me this I know for the Bible tells me so."  What a simple and complex theological statement!  Jesus takes our problems upon himself even if we don't deserve to have him take them.  Letting things roll off our shoulders onto his is a good thing to practice.  He knows everything about our lives as well as what is going to happen in our lives so why not let him have our lives problems?  It's easier said than done but over time gets easier and more automatic.  The negative events of our lives will happen.  That's just the way things go.  How we move through them is dependent on whether we give them to God or try to be god ourselves.  So, can I talk with you...alone?