Torqued!!

Until this morning I have done pretty well handling the stress of our current situation of moving and preparing to change our lives once again.  

This morning, when I realized that a well meaning neighbour had taken his snow clearing machine along our entire block, including in front of our place where I so painstakingly shovelled for two hours yesterday and that his tires had pulled a fair amount of snow down from along the edges of where I had piled it on the lawn, thereby packing the snow over an inch deep along the entire expanse of sidewalk, I absolutely lost it.

Furious, and furious at myself for feeling so furious, I donned my boots and coat, grabbed a shovel and headed out for an otherwise unexpected forty minutes of chipping and bashing and stomping on the packed snow to clear it off the sidewalk for a second time.  I was so mad I was shaking and I am sure my heart was pounding badly by the time I was done.  My anger was completely out of proportion to the incident.  To be clear, I wasn't angry with the neighbour and his good intentions and his work to clear our block of snow, even if he wasn't particularly successful.  I was mad at God for letting it happen.

And isn't God really the ultimate recepticle for our anger or bitterness?  We might think we are mad at another person, or at ourselves for being so helpless to fix some of our unfixable life situations, but if we are truly honest with ourselves it is really God, or the universe or some other cosmic force that we are angry at deep down in the core of our being.  Even people who don't believe in God can get pretty angry at life's circumstances or some other concept or being outside of their own control or imagination or creation.

In this case I know for a fact I was mad at God!!  Grrrr, mumble, grumble, complain and carp!!!  Childish and ridiculous I know, but that is the indicator of a climbing stress level for me.  The world is out to get me and it is all God's fault.  Aiiii yiiiii.....I am confessing this with some degree of embarrassment for my reaction to a fairly simple and simply solved situation.  I need to confess it because there is nothing like confession to direct my attention to a deficit in my own character that needs some attention.

So, time to examine my level of stress and start doing something to contain it and deal with it.  I am going to start with a hot shower and hair treatment, taking some time to read some newspapers and just relax for the rest of the morning.  This afternoon I will have lots of time to prepare the guest room for our overnight visitor and get some semblance of a decent supper on the table.  We certainly had fun with our dinner guest last night and tonight will be grand as well.  Then tomorrow afternoon I can start the next round of serious packing up.  There is lots of time...I need to remember that.  Losing forty minutes for an unexpected round of ice and snow hammering is NOT a big deal.