A war in Iraq, Hurricane Katrina, Hurricane Rita. Car bombings; people jammed inside a Convention Center, then waiting for buses that never seem to come and, just when we think we can't take any more, miles of cars stalled on jammed highways trying to escape Rita.

Desperation and pain and fear and heartache and stress everywhere we look.

One image in particular stands out. We're inside the Houston Astrodome, a few days after the Katrina victims have arrived. As the TV camera pans the scene, we catch sight of a woman standing by the end of a cot. Her children are sitting on the cot and at that moment seem content. The little girl is combing a doll's hair; the boy is absorbed with a coloring book. Mom stands at the end of the cot and folds a blanket. She folds it exactly. She makes sure that the corners are perfectly aligned.

And something moves inside my chest. I see into that woman's heart. It's 1996 and Hurricane Fran has just hit our home in Raleigh, NC. At 3 AM a 36,000 pound tree crashes through our front door and water floods in. As soon as it's light enough to see, we discover that, while that is the worst of the damage, trees are down all over our property. It is essentially incomprehensible. Don gets out the chainsaw; I get a broom and just stand with it in the middle of the driveway, a driveway that has three large trees in piles. What good is a broom?

And then I think of the back deck. I go through an obstacle course of trees to get to the back of the house, and there is the deck, undamaged. Just filled with leaves and sticks.

I sweep that deck. I sweep it perfectly. I make sure that not even one leaf is left.

In my opinion, loss of control is a giant part of stress. To survive, we do what we can.

And, no matter how small it is, it helps.