I still remember where I stood that Sunday. I must have been three or at the oldest four. The church’s smell of coffee drifted above the part in my hair, crisply pleated lines of men’s suit trousers at my level.
I reached up to take again my dad’s hand, callused and rough from years of farm chores. Yet the chuckle I heard wasn’t his.
A missionary friend told me once of a person she’d spoken with who, as a child in Africa, was slapped every time she asked a question.
I was moved by the person’s insight: “You don’t just stop asking questions,” they’d mused to my friend.
Reading Time: 5 minutes
I still recall with vividness my son’s drawing, proclaiming my anger issues to the world.
It was in red marker (his favorite color). Chunky hands rested on wonderfully slim, stick-figure hips. “I made you look mad, but you’re not mad in this picture,” he explained.
“Am I mad a lot?” I asked, willing him of course to say no.
“You’re mad a lot, but not in this picture,” he clarified helpfully.
See, I didn’t really think I had an anger problem until I had kids. (Newlywed-me actually told my husband I’d never had problems like this with anyone else, so it must be his fault.
True story.)
Maybe you already know your hot buttons.
I’m personally more likely to lose it when we’re in a hurry. When I’m feeling taken for granted. And one particular week a month.
But it helped me to conduct autopsies on my outbursts–discovering what was fueling my anger and how to start cutting off the source of that fuel.
See, back when I was potty-training kids, there was a progression:
1 ) Kids recognize what their bodies just did.
2) Eventually, kids recognize when their bodies are actually doing it.
3) Finally, kids recognize before they need to go.
And that’s me with anger. A lot of times I’m still on step one–figuring out what just happened and what should have happened. When a freeze-frame of my yelling, livid face might not hold the caption, Behold! A Jesus-follower loving her children.
There’s a need for confession and repentance to God. To my kids.
Or sometimes I’m on step 2. Hey, you’re blowing your top! Better step away and make sure the Holy Spirit’s in the one control of you.
But the best happens in step 3–when I’m able to head off an angry outburst at the pass. Or when I can hit the brakes enough that I’m not driven by the emotion, but by love and laser-precise anger.
Keep in mind the powerlessness kids may feel when an authority figure and provider is angry with them. It could possibly be an escalated version of a boss raging at us.
I had to ask: Do I want my kids to have to protect themselves from me?
My anger, for all its energizing power, has been a destructive, corruptive force, incinerating my kids’ emotions.
I need to handle conflict in ways that actually build my family up rather than tearing it down.
So allow me to ask: Why does God get angry?
You probably know this.
Jesus was angry. Anger is a jetpack for change and injustice. It’s a sign something valuable and precious is trampled on.
God’s anger displays proper justice against those who legitimately do evil. It protects what is right and holy and pure; it acts on behalf of the oppressed.
When we see unspeakable atrocities from genocides or racism or against the poor, it is God as Righteous Judge that gives me any hope for the future (see Matthew 10:26).
For a more extreme example, if someone hurt your son or daughter, for example, anger would be an appropriate emotion.
Making us in his image, God allowed us to share his capacity for this emotion, too.
But too often, my own scale of “righteous judgment” is…off. (Think of a conveniently non-zeroed bathroom scale after the Chinese buffet.)
My loves swell disproportionately. A proper desire expands into a clawing, judging, punishing demand. (See Hungry: When Soul-cravings Leave Us Vulnerable.)
Usually, I need a few minutes to get out of the more instinctual part of my brain (my fight, flight, or freeze instincts)…and help my kids get out of theirs. It gives me time to pray, too.
Try these questions to help yourself emotionally step away when anger is hot.
So in light of that inevitable human miscalibration, I like Tim Keller’s summary of the anger I need: not No Anger, not Blow (up) Anger, but Slow Anger. God describes himself throughout Scripture as slow to anger, abounding in love.
Keller explains we want to use anger as a scalpel–not a grenade.
Out of the overflow of the heart, the mouth speaks (Matthew 12:34).
So I could be like, Lord, the dog puked on the carpet! And my kids are SO disrespectful! And my husband totally forgot again to pick up milk, so I have to go out with all three kids and strap them in the car seat and take them to the bathroom in the middle of my shopping.
…but that’s not the real issue, is it? Isn’t the issue inside of me?
When I see the source of my anger as outside of myself, I surrender my ability to change.
And honestly, I wish I could tell you, So that was then! Great news is, I’m so much better now!
My anger issues are unquestionably better. In some ways, I’ve sadly passed them on to my kids.
In nearly all ways, it’s a “long obedience in the same direction.” But I’m not the same mom I was when my kids were little. (And my hips are definitely a little wider than a stick figure.)
It’s the hard, beautiful work of God in my life toward holiness–of the Holy Spirit making self-control a reality.
Ready to get a grip on anger with me?
Two of the most important words you’ll ever say
When Your Teen Yells at You: 8 Win-win Ideas
When Anger’s Hot: Raising Self-Controlled Kids in Outrage Culture
Reading Time: 3 minutes
Ever feel like “real” friendships aren’t worth the risk?
Back when I was sporting a baby bump (still in the “Is she chubby or pregnant?” phase)—I found out that my third-born was a girl.
There in my then-testosterone-dominated household, pint-sized males regularly calculated the highest step they could jump from without a trip to the ER. They sprinkled around the sides of the toilet. Children’s books instructed me in terminology for construction equipment I never knew existed.
I should have been happier. But a real part of me was afraid.
Female friendships had left me limping.
In high school, I much preferred guy friendships. Guys meant what they said. No back-biting or whispers or veiled kindnesses.
See, sometimes it’s easier to avoid rejection or misunderstanding or judgment than it is to be with other people.
My desire to control rejection, at its ugliest, led to a near-eating disorder. (Read: Some part of me would literally rather starve than be rejected.)
I wish I could say, But that was then!
Yet in the stressed version of myself, my reflex is still to clam up and isolate. The risk just seems too high.
But as it’s been said: She who waits for perfect friends finds herself…
Alone.
I am actively working toward more vulnerability with safe people. Toward relationships with a few more sinks of dirty dishes in the background, and a little less lipstick in the foreground.
Sometimes the effort feels herculean. I’ve even been guilty of offering just enough appearance of authenticity–a “curated imperfection.”
But I appreciate this blogger’s thoughts on just how vulnerable women in ministry should be. She writes that isolation is spiritual dysfunction.
When I choose aloneness, I choose against God’s design of a whole body.
True story: I know personal stories of a growing number of women who’ve literally had a mental breakdown in part due to isolation.
What if our facades and efforts to keep it all together are contributing toward our implosion?
Of all the uncontrollable factors in our lives, what if defeating isolation is the one choice we do have in staying healthy?
As someone wrote me this morning, emotional health and vulnerability allow us to actively participate in God making us holy.
Choosing community means choosing to grow and depend on each other. Trusting each other, even when it feels strikingly like streaking in an ice storm.
Turns out my fears for my daughter weren’t unfounded. Girl drama abounds in middle school. (Shocker.) But together, she and her mom are learning to choose the relationships that make us more whole.
What’s the baby step you’ll take with me to choose vital friendship?
Reading Time: 4 minutes
There’s a question Jesus asks a blind man in the book of Mark that I am occasionally a little jealous of.
“What do you want me to do for you?”
I picture the man there, not seeing the hairy legs he sits in front of. Knowing what Jesus smells like, committing his voice to memory. Perhaps the man reaches out a hand, adding a fabric texture to his mental portrait.
“Rabbi, let me recover my sight.”
What would it be like, I’ve wondered, to have the opportunity to ask for your miracle?
I’ve mused over how I would answer. Because of course, we can ask for miracles. And they are often granted! (See 1 John 5:15.)
Though there are overarching answers–the “right” answers, maybe world peace or something–my answer often takes on the flavor of my season, the ache of my heart. For where your treasure is…
In the story, everyone else is basically telling the guy to put a sock in it. I like that “he cried out all the more, ‘Son of David, have mercy on me!'” I can’t help but think that his insistence helps land him the miracle.
But sometimes, it can be easier to identify with Lazarus, or the girl who died. We wait for him to call our name.
I’m spitballing here, but something tells me those two funerals weren’t Jesus’ first.
What about all those who didn’t get a miracle?
There’s an interesting verse in Hebrews: Now in putting everything in subjection to [Jesus], [God the Father] left nothing outside [Jesus’] control (2:8). Normally–when you are more of the blind man, so to speak–this verse is a strong tower. Nothing is outside of your control, God.
But there are times when we are waiting. Or maybe you’ve already received your answer, and it’s a no.
Nothing is outside of your control, God.
So why this?
The answer tends to leave us mulling over similar concepts to the prayer I whispered as a child: God is great. God is good.
I have seen people drift away from both, listless after their miracle vaporized before their eyes.
Friends have drifted away from believing God is sovereign, because surely he would not [fill-in-the-blank]; it would not be good.
Other friends have edged more toward the protection of deism: It’s easier to believe in a God who is detached than in one who had control, but did not act.
Or maybe it was me! Maybe I didn’t have enough faith. (We might get that from Mark 6:5-6, or James 5:15). Or maybe, we wonder, this is because of some secret sin (from verses like 1 Corinthians 11:29-30…or just our own belief in justice).
I don’t think we should feel like failures [when we don’t see miracles like in the New Testament], because I don’t think that God has ordained that the same intensity and clustering of power for supernatural intervention was intended to be normative for the whole church.
….Paul says, “Take a little wine for your stomach, Timothy, because you’ve got this stomach problem,” instead of, “Bang! I’ve got enough faith, I’m healing Timothy!” Why?
And Paul himself suffered many kinds of things that weren’t miraculously healed. When he was lacerated on his back or stoned, they didn’t get over him and just pray and—bang!—all the scars and infection went away. He dealt with the same things we did.
I think of the man lowered through the roof by his friends (Luke 5:17-39). I found it fascinating that when the man asks for healing, Jesus first forgives his sins. It’s only later, to prove his authority to forgive sins, that Jesus causes him to walk.
Jesus died for more than just our lives to be Teflon.
I don’t know the longed-for miracles twisting your gut this week. But I know the ones twisting mine. Some have found me sobbing.
I find odd comfort in Daniel, in that old Sunday School story of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, just as they were about to be shoved into a furnace.
Our God whom we serve is able to deliver us from the burning fiery furnace, and he will deliver us out of your hand, O king. But if not, be it known to you, O king, that we will not serve your gods. (Daniel 3:17-18)
Am I the only one who hears an echo of Job in there? The Lord gives, and the Lord takes away. Praise the name of the Lord!… Though he slay me, I will hope in him (Job 1:21, 13:15).
Reading Time: 4 minutes
Stress is like wearing a flannel shirt when you’re washing dishes, you know?
One minute, you’ve got your hands in the water, scrubbing, the edge of your cuffs kissing the water. Next minute, the water’s bled up to your armpits. (For this reason, my husband’s told me that in Boy Scouts, they always said “Cotton is death”: If you’re wearing cotton when you’re active in the cold, it absorbs your perspiration, and can quickly bring you to hypothermia in bad weather.)
Last week, I had a brief argument with my husband, who I still adore. The thing was so brief, I can’t remember the subject (and don’t really want to try). But I confess. I came downstairs, and upon finding my kids not completely obeying and them chilling out in a messy room? Woe be unto you, children! I stomped around, controlling and ordering the parts of my life that I could. (Most of them are shorter than I.)
At one point, I looked over at my daughter. She perched on a barstool in her green stocking hat, bestowing upon me the stinkeye. I asked her if she wanted to talk about why she was angry. This one, I saw coming: “You take your anger out on us.”
Reading Time: < 1 minute
Like this post? You might like
Reading Time: 3 minutes
Fear has this way of flaying us open, I think. Of laying bare what we see as bigger than us.
Worry manifests itself in vastly different ways. Some of us, for example, seek to staunch this bleeding of our hearts with intense control or safety. That is to alternatively say, some of us who struggle most with control actually are waging an inner battle with fear. As counselor and neuropsychologist Ed Welch writes, “One message is obvious: ‘If I imagine the worst, I will be prepared for it.’ Worry is looking for control….Worry has become your talisman to ward off future catastrophe.”
Reading Time: 4 minutes
I drilled down a bit in my surly little soul. Anger, I recall, is secondary; it stems from something: disappointment, fear, hurt, sadness. For me, there were slices of sadness—but also a big hunk of fear. More specifically, I felt powerless.
As I was scrawling thoughts for this post, I felt rather sheepish for even labeling that. The reasons I feel powerless are nothing like some of you reading this, huddling (or scramming) when an abusive spouse comes home. Or perhaps you’ve got a boss who makes you feel about an inch high, or even threatened—but you’ve gotta pay the rent. Or maybe you’re a person of color, feeling terrified and estranged after the last election. Or you have a dark diagnosis and a couple of small kids.
![Now You're Speaking My [Love] Language](https://www.janelbreitenstein.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/love-languages-text-1.jpg "Now You're Speaking My [Love] Language")
© 2024 THE AWKWARD MOM
Theme by Anders Noren — Up ↑
