It was one of those death-by-papercut days, when little things hurt a lot, and all my nerves–even the proverbial last one–were on edge. I wanted to scream, both loudly and frequently.
Fortunately, on some level I could see that most of what felt overwhelming merited, at most, a momentary scowl. Yet my irritation was relentless, like a piece of grit in my eye or a stone in my shoe. Everyone was driving me crazy.
I distracted myself with a computer game to keep from snapping at my kids. Unfortunately (or perhaps unsurprisingly), that did little to alleviate my problem. I was still acutely aware of every minor flaw of those around me.
Read More: 6 Ways to Calm Down During a Panic Attack
I went for a walk, to see if exercise would help. It did, but I still felt like screaming when my teenager made noise scrambling eggs in the kitchen.
I paid some bills and folded laundry, scratched the dog’s soft ears, had a cup of tea, and read non-political articles in the newspaper. Eventually I’d calmed down enough for it to occur to me to pray.
But what? “Lord, make this irritability stop!” didn’t seem right. I tried a few others before I hit the right one. The prayer that got an immediate response was, “Lord, what do you want me to learn?”
“Learn to tolerate discomfort without blaming others,” came the gentle reply. I grimaced, but nodded in agreement. Yes, that was indeed what I needed to learn. Fortunately, practice makes progress. I was getting plenty of practice.
