Angry?

“In your anger, do not sin.” Ephesians 4:26a

A lot of my life, I’ve viewed anger as something negative.  My high school years were full of blow-up-like expressions of my anger and frustration.  So, I didn’t handle it well.  There’s a scene in “Enchanted” when Abigail Adams’s character is a happy princess from animation, and she’s never experienced anger before.  When she does experience anger and realizes what it is, she starts laughing because it’s something new, but then goes back to being angry again.  One of my friends at Gear Up asked why God even gave us that emotion.  Anger is not bad if we funnel it where it’s supposed to go.  It’s only bad when we handle it wrongly.  If we sin by how we handle our anger, then it’s bad.  But just having anger isn’t.  Does that make sense?  I went to a counselor when I was in elementary school because I didn’t handle anger well.  That was the counselor who introduced me to writing it down to get it off my chest.  Writing has become such a huge part of my life now.  I may or may not have written through a few pages I was pressing my pen into the paper so hard while I’m writing angry.  I go through journals like crazy, but now, when I express my anger there, I pray, as well.  In these last few days, even, I realize how much praying about my anger and turning to the Lord helps me to not blow up.  As bad.  It certainly cleans up the mess and doesn’t cause me to break anything that I’d have to pay for, anyway.  Satan loves when we blow up and hurt people or things with our words or actions when we’re angry.  In the Avengers, Bruce Banner eventually reveals his secret at how to contain and control the Hulk: he’s always angry.  I think many of us have a green monster than emerges when we’re angry, but if we use it to battle the bad guys instead of our friends, it can be good.

I am angry that more people don’t know or won’t even accept the gospel.  But I won’t blow up about this.  It is motivation to go out and fulfill the great commission, sharing the love of the Lord.  I am angry that I have Multiple Sclerosis.  It took me a long time and a semester full of weekly visits to a counselor’s office to admit that, but it’s true.  I’m angry, but I’m not bitter about it.  I can funnel it into good someday.  (Not sure how yet, but it’s in my head and in the works there.)  I get angry when people say hurtful things to me, but I have learned the power of the Lord through that, too.  Okay, so I’m still learning, but I’m getting better about it.

Do you get angry?  Do you let the monster emerge or laugh at the experience?  Okay, nobody laughs when they’re angry.  Unless they’re pretending not to be angry at someone and “brushing it off as sarcasm” (guilty).  It’s not wrong to be angry!  It’s human.  It’s what you do with the anger that’s important.

Smiling cuz I’m not angry at the moment, Anna =)^2