Prodigal: I am about to have a fit over this ole vacum.
Me: Hold your horses. Let’s look at that anger for a second.
This is from the book Reclaiming Your Heart by Denise Hildreth Jones
It wasn’t hard for me to recognize I was angry at that moment. (It isn’t always quite that clear to me.) But I still needed to get honest with God and myself about what was going on. So I went upstairs to my little boy’s room, where I often like to pray when it is too cold to walk outside, and began to tell God everything I was feeling–the hurt, the fear, the disappointment, but especially the anger. I was so angry.
Do you know what God did in response? Nothing like what I used to think he would do. There was no lightning bolt. He didn’t scream down from his throne and say, “How dare you do anything but praise me!”
No, it was like he pulled up a chair at the table over a batch of hot biscuits and said, “Okay, let’s talk. I’m listening.” And he gave me freedom to be honest. I wasn’t disrespectful. I wasn’t demanding. I was simply broken–and desperate to understand what my heart felt was such extreme injustice.
Reclaiming the angry heart begins by giving ourselves the freedom to be angry. Remember, feeling anger is not a sin. Feeling anger is an unavoidable human response to a perceived threat. So it’s okay to feel angry. Our responsibility is to refuse to let the anger settle in us.
Psalms 90:2
Before the mountains were brought forth, or ever you had formed the earth and the world, from everlasting to everlasting you are God.
Jennifer Van Allen
www.theprodigalpig.com
www.faithincounseling.org
