TAKING THE WRONG EXIT

Nate was telling me not too long ago about a friend of his from preschool. Their friendship was on and off and Nate described it by saying "I want to be his friend, Mimi, but it's tricky".

Gotcha, Nate. That describes my last few days; they have not been my best.

I took the wrong exit off the relational highway by reacting to some misunderstandings and mischaracterizations. Well, they looked like that from my side.

The feeling of defensiveness and the need to explain myself swelled up inside me. I was overwhelmed with the need to set someone straight. It has been a long time since I've been that angry and it surprised me that it couldn't be put aside. For the better part of two days I simmered. In the middle of the night I woke up thinking about the situation and couldn't go back to sleep. Anger was controlling me. I am not so much of a hollerer like old Jack and Adam in the picture. My anger is more internal.

Not wanting to consult the Lord (because I knew His anger verses)...I brooded. I didn't want to hear the Ephesians 4.26 stuff about the sun not going down on my anger because I wasn't quite through being miserable yet. I didn't want to hear that love was not touchy or resentful (1 Corinthians 13.5) because I MIGHT have been a bit touchy, but I had every right to be offended. Then there's that meddler James (from 1.20) who says my anger can never make things right in God's sight. Hush, James.

Of course, the truth is that anger is an emotion and not a sin. The sin comes as anger is cherished (as I did) and a person refuses to address it (forgive) and move on.

When I got up the next morning, my body and spirit were WAAAY miserable from lack of sleep. In self-defense, my spirit began to relent. The "want" to eat dirt/apologize was not there yet, but I found myself starting to put my words down in a letter to own what I could. Beginning to feel a release in my spirit, I realized that the thing that had caused me to bow up was now losing it's power over my disposition.

Then something pretty cool happened. God showed up.

God is so faithful. Well, that's His name. El HaNe'eman (from Deuteronomy 7.9) means Faithful God. I couldn't call that name or spell it, but THAT MORNING I knew the truth of the character trait. It came from a tweet from Dennis Rainey that caused me to perk up. I recognized that voice! Dennis wrote the tweet, but he was speaking for Someone else. And the tweet that day said we should pray that our heart would not be eager to be angry, but that being "slow to anger" would be more our speed. Dennis listed Ecclesiastes 7.9 as his reference: "Do not be eager in your heart to be angry, for anger resides in the bosom of fools".

Hmmm. Fools? That must be because anger eats up the angry person's insides. Then I turned to The Message and got a better understanding:

"Don't be quick to fly off the handle. Anger boomerangs. You can spot a fool by the lumps on his head."

BINGO. Lumpy knew that the One who spoke heaven and earth into existence...had kindly bent to whisper into her ear that morning. Now I was getting the "want to". I asked Him to forgive my churlishness and hurried to finish the letter.

It feels good to please your Father. It feels good to be set free from that chokechain. Father does know best.