I was talking with a friend about how sometimes all the dark actions and hatred going on in our world make me feel disturbed and anxious.

Sometimes I feel so upset that I want to stop in the middle of getting breakfast and go out and flail away. To put on my Superwoman T-shirt and do some major action to make it all better, to fix everything at once.

My saner self knows that I cannot do that. But what can I do? And how do I maintain my serenity in the midst of all this?

“You can’t fix all that darkness,” my friend told me.  “No one can. But we each still have personal power, the power to shine light into that darkness.”

“The hard part is implementing that, in the moment when I feel upset and anxious,” I said. “How do you do that?”

“If you decide to live in fear and anxiety and anger and hatred, you will add to the darkness,” she said. “You will make it stronger. There are always two paths ahead of each of us: the way of fear and the way of love. The way of fear adds to the darkness. The way of love diminishes it.

“To choose the way of love,” she continued, “we have to trust God… to help us through this and to somehow make good out of it, as he has promised to do.

“What we have to do, instead of stepping off into the darkness, is to stay on God’s path, the golden path.”

Instantly I saw a picture in my mind of darkness with a narrow arc of golden light, circling through it.

“Walking the golden path means living in the moment and focusing on the next step, trying to do the next right thing that you think God would want you to do, and putting everything else into His hands.”

I have to confess that I have a hard time trusting current national and international events to God. But staying on the golden path doesn’t mean not having any doubts or fear. Staying on the golden path is not ignoring the darkness, pretending it doesn’t exist, or hanging up a curtain of denial between me and the world and painting it with Pollyanna slogans.

No, “follow the golden path” means putting aside paralyzing anxiety by focusing on “the next right thing” and doing it, and then doing “the next right thing”.

While I’m deciding what to do, just how to shine my light in the darkness, I can choose the golden path.

While I’m deciding on what small actions to take in my community, I can choose the golden path.

Staying on the golden path is eating a healthy breakfast and drinking enough water. It’s taking time to text my loved ones, telling them how much I love them. It’s studying current events so I can form opinions based on the facts. It’s reaching out to those who are going through physical challenges or other hard times to tell them that I care.

It means weeding the native prairie gardens I planted this year and filling the bird bath with water. It means finishing that paperwork I’ve been putting off. It means doing my physical therapy and getting healthy exercise.  And very much, it means “loving the one I’m ones I’m with;” loving the husband who has stuck with me through good and bad times for 45 years and loving the children and grandchildren who bless my life.

I have learned this about the golden path: When I choose sanity, when I just stay on the golden path instead of spinning off into anxiety and fear and despair, when I stay with love, interacting in positive ways with those around me, and doing my honorable best to fulfill my honorable part in the world, I feel much better. And then when I open my eyes, I see all around me happenings, large and small, that are evidence that God is still at work in this pain-wracked world.

I experience (in a fellowship I belong to), a group of strangers suddenly coming together, creating a warm and positive place of healing for all.

I hear a podcast in which Gabby Giffords, who more than anyone I know has reason to fall away into fear and darkness, chooses the positive path. I hear her speak three simple words to other victims of gun violence: “Hope and faith,” she says.  “Hope and faith.”

I see this Bible verse on today’s page in a meditation book I read, “You’re blessed when you stay on course, walking steadily on the road revealed by God.” Psalm 119:1 (MSG).

Hope and faith and staying on the golden path.

That will bring me through.