I had a couple of very ugly moments yesterday I wish with all my heart I could take back.
But I can’t.
And I can’t justify, rationalize or intellectualize my behaviour and words.
I really wish I’d done the cyber equivalent of ‘bite my tongue’, and ’sit on my hands’.
But I didn’t.
I let lose in anger and frustration at someone who was trying to help me and I said some ugly things.
They were generic ugly things, and even as my fingers were pounding the keyboard I typed in a plea to myself more than to the person I was yelling at…
“this isn’t directed at you.”
Who am I kidding?
They were the recepient of my anger, so they bore the brunt of it. The fact they are good natured and mature does not lessen my culpability.
As quickly as the anger was spent, shame moved in. I’ve apologized and I’ve been forgiven. And there in lies the rub. I do not sin so grace may abound.
I’ve been thinking a lot about misdirected anger today and about lingering grief. And in reading this post I had an eurkea! moment - one of those good moments where someone says something in just the right way - where something niggling in the background finally comes to the forefront.
For several years, I’ve bragged that one of the best things that ever happened to me was going to a Wounded Ministers Conference early in my own ministry. It was the first of its kind, and I went to “cover” the conference for Baptist Press.
I left when it was over, convicted that I was horribly mismanaging my responsibility as a husband, and had been given the chance to avert a certain relational disaster later. I asked Kelli’s forgiveness for exerting my flesh in our disagreements. Whenever we fought, I fought to win. I’d turn off the emotion, and I’d be as cold and calculating as necessary to win.
Ever since 1996 I have been thankful for that lesson. I have walked in the victory of that lesson for eight years. On Friday, it was if I had never learned it at all. We had a disagreement that instantly blew up into an ugly situation for no other reason than I completely chose to ignore what I knew to be true. The details of the disagreement are insignificant. What is significant is that I chose to justify my anger. I wanted my flesh to be satisfied. I wanted to be right, to win, more than I wanted to be reconciled. So I was carnal and ungodly.
And I was wrong.
Look, I don’t take any pleasure in writing about this…I know that people I know, love, and respect read this…and it’s embarrassing to reveal it. I want to hide it, bury it, and never have to acknowledge that I failed my wife.
I was going to delete a comment I made yesterday because I was really sleep deprived and self-pitying, squealing like a stuck pig. But something made me pause and leave it there. I’m not proud of being in that place, it haunts me. It has haunted me for quite some time.
Some words in McNally’s post have given me a freedom I haven’t found in a year and a half. I have a family of origin. I didn’t chose them. I have a family of choice - Christians. Some of them I wouldn’t chose if I had my way. Thankfully I don’t.:^) Since I am the church I have a chosen responsibility to others to seek nothing less than reconciliation. The bride of Christ…brothers and sisters…love one another. It doesn’t matter where my brother is at. That is up to God. It matters where I’m going. My prayer is we can go to the cross together someday. I can accept nothing less.
These can’t just be words. They have to be lived. And I realize that though I trip and fall that is what drives me in this particular sadness.
What is significant is that I chose to justify my anger. I wanted my flesh to be satisfied. I wanted to be right, to win, more than I wanted to be reconciled.
link via The Upward Way Press
Published 4 years, 4 months ago
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Friend, be at peace. That is my advice. I have found encouragement in your words. Be encouraged in return.
It is humbling, this ‘flesh’ that lives in us. Isn’t it? I sometimes think that the hardest part about ‘losing our cool’ (which certainly we all do from time to time) is that it blows the whistle on our pride. Yes, it is painful to hurt others and ‘grieve the Spirit’, but God is a God of grace. I sometimes think that our bouts of anger hurt the religious image we want to preserve or ourselves. It is painful to see the cracks. Maybe that is not your case, but it does happen, I think.
Matt
I can’t. It’s an obsession I guess, and perhaps not a magnificent one. I have no gifts to lay at the alter. I can’t go to my brother for he has no desire to reconcile. I can’t Matt.
Bene,
Paul says “as much as lies in you, be at peace with all.” We are also told in another scripture that if we confess our sins, he(God) is faithful and just to forgive us our sins… You have done that and you have tried for your part. I was aware of that. God’s response is sure. The other also seems to be sure, but you are not responsible for that.
Shalom,
Jan
Then as much as possible I accept your admonitions and blessings of peace…but…(;^)
I believe Romans 12:1. I believe He is faithful and just…I know we are not to dwell on incompleteness. I understand we are to move on, that is part of honouring His love for us. This isn’t just about the renewing of one’s mind. It’s not going to go away. To trust, to wait, to hope isn’t to settle for less than…
Jan, can you?
Bene,
what I wrote came out of some things I have faced in the last few weeks, particularly since death of SIL and in some family relationships. Like yourself and Brian and several other bloggers we possibly both read, I have recently faced some things in myself which are not at all pleasant. I do think it’s about renewing the mind, but renewing it at much deeper levels than we often recognise. I also know that this is something which won’t ever be fully done.
Like you, I have found that certain triggers instantly dredge up stuff I thought I had dealt with and moved past. Then I have to confess my sin in my reaction and accept forgiveness from God.
I know that what I’m saying barely touches the surface. I’m not trying to offer stock standard responses couched in Christian jargon. They always seem plastic and artificial to me.
It’s something I’m grappling with as well.
Shalom, (much more than just peace)
Jan
Yeah. I understand about the triggers.
Mine was going into the archives to clean up the spam.
I hadn’t been back. I couldn’t. I just hadn’t.
I’ve pulled out a few posts I knew in search, but I hadn’t gone back and looked.
Odd eh?
I write, put it out, it’s gone for me.
The paycheck covers it, the words belong to the station, to the publisher, to the public…that is a given in the job.
But this is personal, and it’s like looking at something crippled.
I think of all the love and effort and encouragement that has come from that…
and I grieve the loss of fellowship, gifts and potential while rejoicing at what has been found.
I know you speak from deep experience Jan, and I am very grateful to you.
Triggers.
A little while ago, I vented at someone. I felt really bad later and apologized. He said, “If you can’t vent wtih me, who can you vent with?”
I suspect that the person to whom you vented might just say that to you. Sometimes it’s nice to have someone safe so you don’t have to measure every word.
Such a wonderful example of how we are to live…thank you!
“Not only I, but Christ who lives within me.” (Can’t remember the exact citation just now)
I’ve been thinking a lot about forgiveness lately. About how forgiveness is not the same as saying that sin is OK, and how forgiveness is not the same as saying “I was not hurt, I was not injured”. Forgiveness is freeing oneself from the burden of the sins of another. We all need to spread that forgiveness around a bit. Sometimes the people we most need to forgive are those who have most hurt us - sometimes even ourselves, eh?
wow, george petty used to say to me,
“hang in tight. but stay cool”
sometimes I think of a pressure cooker, and
the meal hits the ceiling, if you don’t turn down the heat….
lot of basic pressure, but hey, we are all moving forward, and gaining !
Cheers…..You will get the book, and flower !
bb