Waiting in Anger

This has truly been a tough two days. You know how it goes, just when you think you got life down part, something happens to completely upset your way of doing things and that once routine way of getting through the day is one big mess!

Well that's been the turmoil in my days after a particularily spiritually dry time. I am sure you've all experienced those too. Those days when reading the Bible and even praying just seems like you're going through the motions but your heart just isn't in it, but you do it anyway because you know you should.

On Monday night, after a long eight hours of work, my hubby was called in to work that night adding to his growing work hours to do an emergency call. The trouble was, he was knee deep in a project already and had to put that aside to leave and head into LA but not before stopping quite a few times to pick up supplies. We could both see it was going to be a long night already.

Not only that, he was going to work with my brother who can be a rough challenge to deal with on his good days. Those two would be working together and it wasn't something either of us was looking to. Let's put it this way, he has a bit of an Eeyore personality that can suck all your emotions completely dry. When he is in a bad mood, everyone knows it. He's just not pleasant to be around. But he is trying to change according to him. It's this negativity that most people try to flee from and it's impacting his job. So he is attempting to change.

Unfortunately that night I got to talk to him and had to deal with Mr. Change. He is a very controlling personality and likes to control the conversation. He will tell you whether or not you have deviated from the topic in hopes of corralling you right back, unfortunately I don't like to be told how to have a conversation, so with him I completely and utterly lost it. I think all those dry days of just taking it all in and dealing with it internally, came pouring out. We literally verbally fought it out for an hour.

My poor hubby didn't even know that anything had transpired by the time he arrived to meet him for work, and during the duration of the time the two worked together nothing came out. However I tried in vain to bury all that emotion inside, knowing that Steve's birthday was the next day. I tried to call him and just have a different perspective on the emotions that were truly at this point running my day and making me physically sick. Only Steve didn't call back.

When his evening finally ended and he did call, I wasn't ready to talk to him and just explained I would talk when he got home. During that time, I asked God how to deal with this situation. I never really got an answer but tried to keep my emotions in check and when Steve arrived home, I told him everything that had happened. Needless to say, he was pretty upset because he knows how cruel my brother can be. He was angry because he didn't even know any of this had transpired.

That's when emotion struck and I let him have it too. I explained that having to work in the communications field made him a poor communicator because he can't even talk to his wife on the phone. Let's just say that this conversation was not going well. For two hours we fought it out.

Can you see where all this is going? I've learned a valuable lesson that I have to let the fire of anger burn out before talking about it. I am trying to learn how to not let my emotions run away with things and put it on the back burner but for me, my emotions are a way of who I am. They influence me in more ways than I care to count.

The birthday yesterday went ok, and we had to stay at home, due to the nature of his work, could require him to be called to work at any time. It took me most of the day to let all the anger to leave so we could actually enjoy Steve's birthday. We all took him to dinner last night and it was a better evening.

I just wanted to share with all of you, my ability to fall short and not be the perfect Christian. I don't know if anything else would have worked out differently. I am still in the process of defining boundaries with people that try to take too much of my time and really work on rebuilding our relationship that took a terrible beating last year. It's a work in progress but if you could pray for us, for wisdom and protection from the enemy, I'd appreciate it. For now, I am drawing closer to God and seeking His help!

Did You Pack Your Angry Eyes?

I remember the movie Toy Story when Mrs. Potato Head is packing Mr. Potato Head up when he was leaving on a search for Woody and Buzz. She specifically wanted to make sure that she packed his "angry eyes" just to make sure he could express that emotion if he found himself getting angry.

Since most of you already know that I recently finished a book entitled, Fresh Start by Doug Fields about dealing with excess baggage we all have a tendency to carry with us throughout our whole lives.

Its not like any of us really want to either, it's just that we don't know how to deal with getting rid of it. I wish it were like baggage because I know despite airport security measures, we would leave that piece of luggage all by itself and never look back.

It is amazing to see just how far some of us have been carrying it too. I don't know about you but when I am planning a trip if I know I have to carry it, then I am packing really light. Less harder on your body especially if your luggage doesn't come with wheels.

Here is how to leave some of that angry baggage behind once and for all and how to learn to deal with it when you notice it's lingering again.

Ephesians 4:26-27 "Be angry, but do not sin; do not let the sun go down on your anger and give no opportunity to the devil."

Psalm 4:4 "Be angry, but sin not."

Did you catch those first two words from God?

Yes, it says be angry. God gave us anger for a reason but we are commanded not to sin while dealing with it. So when a situation has got us angry we have two choices to make; choose pain or peace.

Which would you rather have pain or peace? Most of us would willingly pass on the pain and go for the peace but since we don't know how to have peace when we are good and steaming mad, we opt for the pain.

Since we are all familiar with the pain, lets look at the peace part.

1. Don't deny it. Somethings wrong and it's okay to say that. Realize what is going on and that you are in the midst of anger.

2. Delay your anger. Put it on hold and say, "I could be wrong here, so let me think this through." You won't be able to deal with what is really going on while this controlling emotion is running your thoughts and actions. So this is a great time to step away from the situation to let that kettle of boiling water, cool off.

3. Define it, then give it to God. Anger is actually a secondary emotion, usually you feel some sort of hurt with it as well. It could be frustrations, disappointment, annoyance, betrayal, loneliness or even fear. You have to see beneath the anger, like pulling back the covers of a lumpy bed to see what is hiding beneath. If you don't, your just dealing with the emotion not is what is causing the pain.

Reflect before you respond. If you don't you will either live in denial, or discount your anger or blame others, or fall into the trap of being a victim.

4. Defuse the Situation ` Diffuse your Anger. Defuse means to remove the fuse from, like removing the fuse from a bomb. Diffuse is to pour out like a liquid, mixing in different actions that will produce peace.

A. Ignore a negative comment. Just walk away. This instantly makes the situation less harmful. You're not there!

B. Don't reply to a person's irritating email. All the words you probably think of are along the lines of jerk, burn in hell, idiot, stupid, nutball, fool, and toilet plunger. Choose, instead, godly silence - and hit Delete.

C. Back away, and don't pursue a fight, even though you know you're right.

D. Let that psycho driver go on down the freeway after he just cut you off. Face it: there will always be nutty drivers in the world. You don't need to teach every one a lesson.

E. Take a deep breath and say nothing when a harsh reaction begs to spill from your lips.

F. Go to the gym and work out your anger on the treadmill - even though you're angry as a hornet and would rather sting.

These are just a few samples of ways to defuse or diffuse the situation. How you choose to respond is entirely up to you. Once that anger is gone, now you can talk about what is really bothering you.