How to Stay Calm in an Unsettled World

Raise your hand if you feel like you can’t anymore. If you feel like you are at your wits end.

My hand is raised high.

Do the words “I CAN’T” repeat over and over in your head?

“I can’t deal with this…”

“I can’t handle this person, this situation.”

“If I’m barely managing now, how in the world am I going to manage when…”

Like I said, you are not alone. I’m also raising my hand.

I have the majority of my children at home and their schools don’t use zoom. Meaning Mommy and Papi have the added roles of homeschooling different ages, different subjects, different personalities. We didn’t sign up for this role, nor do we have the training, nor know what we are doing.

Yes, I am the first to admit my weaknesses and my lack of capabilities.

And we are also trying to survive physically, financially, mentally, and spiritually during a time that is hard on…everybody. And YES, of course I know and I see and appreciate the blessing in it all, but I do have my moments when…

I feel like saying over and over, “Come Hashem, can you give me a break? I can’t do this. Really.”

Can I a person be patient and calm when they have an anxious personality?

Can a person not lash back when they are constantly provoked?

Can a person not worry when everything is so uncertain and so up in the air?

Can a person have faith and trust when they feel so insecure?

I have a cute little story.

I was helping a couple, involved in their pregnancy journey and birth.

When helping I try to encourage and support. I give information. I explain things from years of experience. I try to be objective and just give over facts. Hashem is always forefront in the picture and I fully endorse the obligation to be responsible.

I told the wife, “Let’s be logical. Make decisions with our brains and not with emotion.”

Her husband pulled me aside. What he said made me smile.

“She’s a Moroccan woman, how can she be anything but emotional? You are asking her to be who she is not. She is emotional. It’s what I love about her.”

I laughed.

Really, can we be who we are not and can we not be who we are?

No, but we can learn to act differently and even flex muscles that were never used before.

How?

I have one way of doing it.

I say if Hashem created the entire universe, something, from nothing. Surely then He can help me. He filled up what was void. He created light. He created EVERYTHING including you and including me.

And I call out to Him, “HELP ME!!!”

“Guide me. Send me the right tools, the right people, the right resources. Expand me when I feel like I’m going to break in ways that I didn’t know I could expand. Give me time when I don’t think there is and let me tap into You, the Source of everything.”

Then what happens? Does anything in my life change? Sometimes yes, sometimes no.

But either way I change and I calm down.