Catch and Release

What is it about 5:30pm with a crying baby, dinner half made, cupcakes half made, laundry half done, Family Home Evening Lesson to give, two hyper-active children and a husband to feed that just makes a person want to grab their head in both hands and scream...Perhaps we'll never know. However, as I was folding the first half of the laundry while the fed, FHE-ed, and sugared children argued in the bath I started to think about how my day had gone from pleasant to Camp Frustration in about 5 minutes. It wasn't the crying baby (I am all too good at tuning that one out), it wasn't the fact that the baking soda was in clumps in the cupcakes (they all floated to the top to be pulled off), it was the fact that I was angry at me for allowing myself to become so frustrated. The problem with this situation is that no matter how much you know that the real person you are mad at is yourself, nobody else knows! So now you just seem like the mean grumpy mom who is mad at everyone, and short-tempered. It really isn't fair! Sometimes you just need to be upset all by yourself for a few minutes, work through what-ever-it-is that got you to this point, and then you can go back to being the nice, happy, patient mom that everyone knows and loves.
So what do you do to work through all the garbage? If I could have my own personal listener (someone who doesn't require anything from me, who doesn't try to fix me, who doesn't have any other obligations at the moment, someone who isn't going to feel attacked, and who is going to immediately forget everything I just complained about ) I could just sit and talk through everything. Unfortunately, there is only one such person, and I don't have the opportunity to talk to him face to face. So, I could just internalize everything and let it fester, focus on it continually until I feel so misused by the world that I am always bitter and angry, or... I could use that release. For most things, like the little day to day annoyances, it isn't important enough to hold on to, but it is important enough to let it go. In the 22nd chapter of Alma, in the Book of Mormon, Aaron is teaching the King of the Lamanites about the plan of salvation and the King, with the intent of repenting and obtaining peace, prays thus "...wilt thou make thyself known unto me, and I will give away all my sins to know thee..." I love that he phrases it that way, as if his sins had before been his treasures, and that he would offer them to God in order to be clean again.
It isn't enough to just take hold of all that is alienating you from peace, or causing frustration, but you need to give it all away, let it go...
Catch and Release.