Let’s talk about anger.
My mother-in-law was just watching Juliette while I was getting ready getting showered so we can get on with our day. And I couldn’t find this headband that I use. There’s like soft sports headbands you put around your face to keep your hair out of your way. People will use them for exercising. I just use them to wash my face. That’s my purpose for them. I use them to wash my face at the sink. I put a shower cap on and I get in the shower. It keeps me from having to mess with my hair as much. And I could not find it for the life of me.
The reason that I couldn’t find it was because I had let Juliette play with it. And she had carted it off somewhere around the house. I’m about to get in the shower. We kind of want to go ahead and get the day moving. I don’t want to be taking too long. And I cannot find this stupid headband. And you might say, well, just get in without it. What happens is my hair and my bangs get wet. And they either look grosser. I have to wash them and it’s just everything kind of falls apart if I don’t have this headband. I put on my towel and I ran all over the house looking for this crazy headband.
Juliette and my mother-in-law were playing outside. And I am just like going on a tear trying to find the stupid thing. In the past, I have used underwear to hold my hair back. I’m thinking, how can I hack this? What am I going to have to do? I really wouldn’t, really don’t want to do that.
My experience with anger.
You know, I prefer to have things as they are. If you have small children or you have any kind of lifestyle where disorder happens, maybe all of us do. This stuff just freaking happens. It’s just how it goes. That’s like life, right? I would love to have everything orderly. Everything as it should be, everything where it should be, everything working as it should be all the time. And it’s just not going to happen.
What happened to me this morning is I got pretty irritated. I got quite irritated with absolute little angel, Juliette. Most adorable child ever, right? It doesn’t matter when they’ve done something that annoys you. Because all you focus on is how much they’re destroying your life, right? I got pretty irritated and I don’t do this too much but occasionally, it happens. And what I noticed is that, like always, I lose my connection with God.
How you lose your connection with God through Anger
A lot of people will talk about self righteous anger and especially in kind of social cause movements. People will talk about the importance of getting angry about something and they’re right. It has to be a very delicate, very specific kind of anger to keep us from being cut off from God. Anger is not a sin. Acting on it is a sin. It’s very difficult in my opinion, to not act on anger.
I personally find it very difficult to be angry and not have sinful thoughts, sinful words, sinful actions. I imagine you might too. When we are upset about something, whether it’s an everyday irritation or it’s a social cause kind of irritation like getting furious about the idea of the sex trader, getting furious about you know, economic injustice or education injustice or health care issues or ill people diseases. All these kinds of things. It’s very important that we get our anger in that very specific lane of focusing on the problem rather than taking any of it personally.
On looking at it from a global scale and feeling that this is an injustice to people who God loves rather than in any way personifying it and hating a person and hating any kind of system but just letting our thoughts get in any way sinful or unhealthy. In the same way, with these irritations like if your child carts off something that you desperately or desperately think you need somewhere in the house and you cannot find it, in the same way, I could feel my spirit losing its connection to the Holy Spirit, it’s connection to God and that’s a very dangerous place to be.
Why losing connection with God is a dangerous place to be
It’s a dangerous place to create anything from which is a big deal for me. So I can never do anything when I’m stuck like that I have to get myself out of it and it’s a dangerous place to interact with others in because we’ll say things and we’ll do things that we regret. It’s a dangerous place to just stay in for ourselves even if we don’t express it in for this kind of person who keeps our anger in that’s the kind of stuff that leads to so much inflammation and stress in our body and ultimately hurts our health and of course, just turn the way we think regularly into things that are damaging, things that are untrue and things that ultimately will lead us away from healthy relationship God and with ourselves and with others.
So when we feel ourselves getting angry, here’s what I would have you do.
First, check in. Is this over a righteous issue or is this a daily irritant? Either one is acceptable I mean, it happens, right? But let’s just see where it’s coming from. If it’s an irritant, it’s pretty hard to ever have that to be righteous. It’s hard to have daily irritant kind of anger be righteous ever. Well, the daily irritant is pretty hard to be righteous.
But the true justice issues, that can’t be a righteous anger. I just want you to check in and see, am I taking this personally in any way? Is this rubbing any of my personal wounds around relationships, around sex or around myself or on other people? Is this becoming too excessive? The rush of anger that I do need to take some kind of helpful action is this going to actually be harmful in the way that I now go out and interact in the world because I’m so pissed off about this even if it’s a good thing, right?
Breathe through that anger
And then, finally, realize that unless we are in that incredibly delicate line of perfectly righteous anger, we lose our connection with God when we’re angry. We really do. And that is a terrifying place to be if you’re trying to do anything productive in your life whether it’s just interact with your family or write something. Whether it’s a blog post, a Facebook comment or a book. Or create a video or Coach a client.
These are all my personal examples. I have to make sure I am in a very healthy, holy space when I do any of those things so that I can hear from God, so I have that kind of divine connection and I can get His help and I can have His wisdom and His guidance. When I’m angry, I just don’t have it. And I would imagine that you guys might have experienced the same thing. So I would love to hear if you do.
Whether or not you think you’ve been able to stay on that righteous fine line and how you’re able to kind of breathe out of it to move past it to let it fade and not act until you’re out of it and then, it’s time to go.
Love you girls. I hope you have a beautiful day. Just remember to breathe through that anger that comes up. It’s inevitable. Don’t blame yourself or guilt yourself. Just don’t act while you’re in it, okay?
Jackie
