Peace

I tell everyone that I like peace.

Once though, when one of my nearly grown-up sons had been talking to me, what was being said made me quite upset. Obviously I have a temper. I have been working to control it for all these many years. I am still working on it.

When I was young, my Grandmother Smith said to me, more than once, words more or less like this: “If the feeling welling up inside you is hot, vial and angry and you feel like hitting someone--that is not the Holy Ghost. He speaks in a still, small voice, is calming and teaches us to love not hate. You know where the hateful feeling comes from and the one promoting it is evil.”

That day when I became quite angry with my son, I walked away from that child and slammed the front door. It took me three tries to get it to bang. How silly. It wasn't the door's fault that I lost it. It wasn’t my son’s fault that I lost it. It was my own. I haven't been that dumb again. Now, I just walk away and leave the poor door alone. I don't even kick rocks. Walking away from a situation that could become volatile is wisest but not the easiest.

I have been known to close the bathroom door and cry but that doesn't work very well because, sooner or later, you have to come out and then you have a splotchy face so EVERYBODY knows. A better motto is, “Leave 'em guessing--walk away smiling.” 

A smile also improves your own outlook. It is difficult to smile and be furious at the same time. 

Mother Teresa said:  “Peace begins with a smile.” 

“When the real history of mankind is fully disclosed, will it feature the echoes of gunfire or the shaping sound of lullabies? The great armistices made by military men or the peacemaking of women in homes and in neighborhoods? Will what happened in cradles and kitchens prove to be more controlling than what happened in congresses? When the surf of the centuries has made the great pyramids so much sand, the everlasting family will still be standing, because it is a celestial institution, formed outside telestial time,”  said Elder Neal A. Maxwell.

“The peacemaking of women in homes and in neighborhoods,” he said. He suggested that it was of an eternal nature and would be in good standing for all time. That means that I need to follow those peacemaking tendencies and put away the door-slamming child. The child needs to learn to bridle the tongue and keep the pace.

I will just need to keep working and smiling.