Unshackled Moments ~ April 28 ~ Anger Issues Tick Me Off

I had a bit of an epic fail recently, and I had an anger relapse. That may sound weird, but it's true because I lived in, with and amidst anger for so long it became a reflex, my go to reaction. When things didn't go my way, I became afraid, or worse, my fears appeared to come to pass, I was as quick to take a hit off anger as I was to drink or drug. Actually quicker since I could do that instantly and without income, whereas I had to at least reach out and pick up the other. This matters for multiple reasons. The scripture says be angry but sin not. Since I have never been able to figure out how to do that, it is better for me not to indulge in anger. I simply can not rage within God's will. I always act as my own agent, and, like a lawyer representing himself, turn my will and life over to the care of a fool who obviously does not have my best interests correctly identified not the ability to provide them.

Nope, when I get mad I sin. It's as simple as 1+1=2. 2+2=4. It's that I fail miserably to serve and love others as I should, as I am called to, as I usually want to. My amazing wife has been overexposed to toxic rage, basically from birth. She has healed much, but like a person who has discovered a deadly allergy, she is extremely wary about getting administered even a small dose, and rightly so. This very understandable fact means when I go off, even though it's about something else, not the least bit directed at her, it frightens her and upsets her. I know this, but when I relapse and get high on anger it's hard to shut that off quickly. Actually, it's as impossible for me to do as it is to control nature's thunder storms, but for some reason the fact that I can't stop it throws me deeper into the rush of rage and places me more firmly in its clutches. Only Christ can speak peace into the storm and instantly have the waves go still. I know this, but what I have also learned from experience is the emotional state that most hinders the bending of the knee in surrender is anger.

Fear, sad, doubt, confusion, joy, gratitude, hopeful and hopeless, when I find myself in any one of these emotional states I can bend the knee, either quickly or at least after a moment of thought and understanding what is best and most desired. Not so with anger. It possesses me, rises up within me even as I try to shut it down and screams I will not bow! And this makes me more angry.

The truth is that I can control my drink much better than I can control my anger, and I can't control my drink much or for long. And here's what makes anger so frustrating. I remember getting clean from crystal meth, which has a trait that makes relapse hard to avoid and causes serious problems. Meth doesn't all get used up and expelled by the body. It hides out and waits.  Later, sometimes much later, exercise or fear or some casual thing will kick it from its hiding place and after fighting to get clean, one suddenly finds one's self high with that oh so familiar rush, without having picked it back up. And of course the beast of craving is reawakened.  Anger is like that, at least for me. There are hot coals and embers that hide somewhere within me. At times I get warnings, a little warmth. Usually my wife lets me know because she can sense the coming earthquake long before I have a clue and feel the tremors shake the world.

But something in the sermon I preached last night, All Of Me, got to me as I came to review and reflect and do my evening meditations. I do not have the ability to ferret out the root of the anger weeds within me, to extinguish every ember and remove the kindling and flash fuel from my heart any more than I do to stop feeling angry at my command once the fire is stoked to life. I need power from on high to stand in the rocking, about to sink, ship that is my life and say Peace be still to the storm. I can't do it. I have no power over the wind and the waves. And yes, I know I capitalized the P in peace, because it is a particular person of peace, type of peace and place of peace. It is a peace that comes through and by the Spirit of God that can quench storms and survive while covered and surrounded by fear and frustration and even doubt.

That special and priceless form of Peace is also a fruit of the Spirit. I can not get it without having the Spirit in control and bearing fruit in my life. I do not need God to give me understanding about the whys and the roots of the embers. I need to surrender those areas with the rest of me, to lay them on the altar of living sacrifice. In submission to the Spirit there is Peace and the ability to live free of anger as I live free of drink and drug. But powered by my own will and nature I can not control when I will be angry again or over what or how much of a raging maniac I'll act like. The time to surrender is not when the storm rages. At that moment I can't bow. In that moment the Spirit is not in control of my life, because I have taken my will and life back and am unable on my own to give it back before the fires burn out and die down. But by bending the knee now, remembering that today is the day of salvation in which I must surrender and die to self in order to follow Jesus, gives the Spirit control to speak peace into my life as the wounds from and causing anger continue to heal, regardless of how long that healing process takes.

My name is Dalyn, and I am addicted to anger that makes me fail to show love, fail to be a beacon of hope, to act a fool and frightens my wife. I can't say what my longest stretch of sobriety is, but I know I got high yesterday and most days here recently. I have a desire to refrain from indulging in the intoxication of anger for the next 24 hours, just one day, and I know that my only hope to make until I finish writing this, much less go to sleep tonight, is to surrender completely, all of me, everything good and bad to Him who is able and to whom be the power and the glory forever and ever amen.

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