Wednesday, December 17, 2008

Talking about Anger

9:24 AM by Christi Bowman

"Love is a Good Thing" Andrew Peterson
"It'll fall like rain on your parade, laugh at the plans that you tried to make, it'll wear you down till your heart just breaks and it's a good thing. Love is a good thing."

I am becoming new creation!

In all my life of growing up in the church this is the first time that this has happened for me. I grew up hearing about becoming a new creation. I did what I was told was necessary so that I could experience new creation. I earnestly believed that Jesus Christ was the Son of God. I said the sinners prayer growing up in a Baptist church. I was Baptized in the Churches of Christ. But secretly, I had to admit that I was the same old person with the same old problems. To be honest I have, at times, felt a little cheated. I wanted the promises of God, they sounded nice in theory. People told me that if I did the things above they would be mine, so I came to the conclusion that either God's promises were lame or I just didn't get it. I was a pretty good person, or so I tried desperately to be, but I knew that I had to fight with everything in me to be that person and even with all that fighting I came up embarrassingly short.

It was not until He came for me that everything changed. For the first time I am living and breathing the promises of Jesus. I no longer think they are bogus or allegorical, or not for right now. For the first time I have help, not outside help, but inside help. It is not easy. I am not finding it to be effortless, but the hearing of His voice changes everything! His voice not only effects my ears, but it effects my eyes and my heart as well.

In my car on Sunday I was listening to Andrew Peterson as I drove with my two girls to see friends I had not seen all year. I grew up with the people I was going to visit; being with them brings back many good memories. We live relatively far from one another and we have to many small children to travel the distance on a regular basis and make the trip seem worth it. This once a year get together means a lot to me.

The location of the party was at the new house of my old friend who lives in Wisconsin. The drive for me was going to be an hour and a half long. I failed to read the directions carefully and made a wrong turn pretty early on in my trip. That decision caused me to go an hour and a half in the completely opposite direction.

When I came to the conclusion that something might be wrong I called my husband and began giving him my location by street names. I had no clue what town, city, or village I was in. He couldn't tell me where I was fast enough and I began to get irritated. It was becoming glaringly obvious that I would not be seeing my friends and that made me very upset...and to top it all off I was lost. My husband was trying to figure out where I was, and when he began to give me directions back home without my permission I lost it. I was not ready to make the decision to come home yet! I yelled at him, swore at him, and then I hung up the phone on him. All of that felt so good because I was hurting so much from the disappointment of the day.

You may be saying "but wait, you started this post off by saying you were becoming a new creation, and that doesn't sound like new creation to me!" and that would be fair...you would be right... that is most definitely the "old" Christi...but what happened next was nothing short of amazing for me.

My youngest daughter was whimpering so I turned around to look at her and she had her ears plugged with her fingers. At that moment the "old" Christi, because of psychological reasons way to numerous to explain, would have been rage filled at the site of her scared and week looking little girl. "Old" Christi would have, with all the hostility in the world, gone down the list with her daughter as to why she had every right to be angry and she would have finished her daughter off with a how dare she participate in such a rude gesture...how dare she make her mommy feel bad. "Old" Christi probably would have said something stupid like "I never want to see you sticking your fingers in your ears again" and she would have most likely threatened to spank her daughter if she ever saw her doing it again.

I was angry, I was hurt, I was disappointed, and I was powerless to fix the situation. I have never learned how to manage my "I'm hurting" emotions. I have learned how to spew my resentment onto others to obtain a little bit of relief from all the negativity I am experiencing. However, when I looked back at her on this particular Sunday I was filled with a compassion that was not initially from me. I don't know how to feel compassion for anyone else when I am the one hurting, but on Sunday Jesus whispered into my ear that everything was o.k....He told me He laughs at the plans I try to make because He has eternal purposes and He uses disappointment to grow me up.

When I looked back at my little girl Jesus healed my eyes and instead of seeing someone week and pathetic that I could exploit for my own emotional gain He let me see and feel her suffering in the moment...her confusion...her fear, and instead of justifying myself He gave me the words to say that mommy was disappointed and mad but that it had nothing to do with her or her daddy. I explained to my little girl that it is alright to feel upset when a situation does not work out the way you thought it might...it is o.k. to feel disappointment. I let her know that although it was o.k. for me to feel those emotions it was still wrong for me to treat her daddy that way. I promised her that I would apologize to him when I got home.

As I was explaining this concept of being mad to my little girl I realized that my children did not live in a world where being mad was o.k. They have only seen me being destructive with my anger and when they get mad I get mad at them for being mad. Without knowing it I have grown up my own children in the same environment I grew up in. Adults are allowed to get mad and act inappropriately out of their anger but children are not. I am beginning to realize that if children are not taught about and aloud to experience anger and work through it they will not know how to deal with their "I am hurting" emotions and they will spew their resentment out on others, and the cycle will continue.

Jesus is an amazing healer and I am finding that He uses the worst of situations sometimes to bring healing, but the worst of situations are the same situations we hurry up and try and find solutions to ourselves. I am going to try to be better at accepting a bad situation for what it is and look for the blessing.

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