Short Fuses And Yelling Messes

Put them all away: anger, wrath, malice, slander, and obscene talk from your mouth. Do not lie to one another, seeing that you have put off the old self with its practices and have put on the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge after the image of its creator. Colossians 3:8-10

I’M A RECOVERING YELLER. I come from a long line of yelling and short fuses and throwing inanimate objects.

The worst is when I have raised my voice at my kids. This is not the kind of momma I want to be. No one dreams of yelling at their children. No one wants that as a recurring scene in their story.

When I read in my Bible how the Spirit of God will bear the fruit of patience, it sometimes seems a bit far-fetched to me. Can He really do that in me? I am so spiritually bankrupt when it comes to having patience.

But because of my great bankruptcy, I know it’s God who is at work in me when I am even just a wee bit more patient than before. I also know that I have to work at this. I have to practice putting away the old ways of my life—all of my anger, impatience, and frustration—and put on a new self that reflects Christ.

To do this, there are three tools for exercising patience that I always carry in my tool belt.

1. Blowing out a candle. When I sense all the physiological signs of my anger rising, I need an equal and opposite calming force. So I use my breath and blow out a pretend candle. I take a nice huge inhale in and then exhale out as long as I can. This relieves a ton of tension, especially if I do it seventeen times in a row. You think I’m kidding.
2. Wiggling my toes. Psychotherapist Tasha Lansbury talks about the moment right before we are going to flip a lid. She says in those moments, our frontal lobes are not connected, and we are in fight or flight mode. But if we feel our feet on the ground—even if we just wiggle our toes—that simple action redirects the energy that has moved up our body to go back down. Feeling our body ground itself reconnects our frontal lobes and moves us out of fight or flight mode.^a
3. Saying I’m sorry. Those two words are used in our house on the daily. Back and forth. Mom to kids. Kids to kids. Kids to mom. Mom to Jesus. Apologizing is like toilet paper in our house: absolutely essential.

If anger is a part of your story, know that you are not defined by it. Where your impatience has increased, grace has increased all the more. You don’t have to remain this way. Ask God to give you strength and hope and control when you sense your temper rising. Take note of when you keep your cool. That is God’s grace! And when you have not? Still God’s grace is there for you. He is facing you, moving toward you, and crazy about you, both when you succeed and when you fail. His power is made perfect in our weakest places.

GRACE REFLECTION: Which of the three tools can you practice this week to develop more patience? Let the following Scripture wash over you: “Lead with your ears, follow up with your tongue, and let anger straggle along in the rear. God’s righteousness doesn’t grow from human anger” (James 1:19-21, MSG).