I've had so much anger, frustration, and anxiety this week. Just when a little dissipates, more finds a way in. In some ways, I've had a righteous anger; things that I was right about that really did need to be resolved or things were going to go badly for lots of people.

The problem is that for some reason I find ways to hang on to this anger way longer than I should. I feel like I have a right to this anger and I should be able to make the person I'm angry at as miserable as I can since they're not doing the right thing. I have these imaginary conversations in my head, which makes me more mad at the person when they didn't even say the things that I'm imagining! Yes, I know that's unfair to them. In my defense, my head is quite unfair to me; I tell myself that I'm trying to process internally, since that is how I process things sometimes.

I do know that this is wrong and that forgiveness should be the first thing I turn to when I've been wronged or when someone isn't making the right decision and it affects me badly.  But here's the weird thing: I think God has been allowing this anger to reside in my heart on purpose. Because as I've been thinking out this blog post and continuing to think angry things, it hit me that I can't get over these things on my own. I just finished talking with Paul and he had me calmed down in about 3 minutes. I've been trying to calm myself for hours. Clearly, internal processing is not working and I have to stop trying to do it myself because processing them internally makes me angrier, which is not ideal. 


And here's what I think is weird; God is trying to teach me about myself and how my natural reaction is sinful and not the way he designed me to cope with anger. You would think after 20 years of being myself I would have figured out the best way to deal with my anger. (Admittedly,we were not designed to be angry). But I haven't. So I've discovered that angry things I have to process externally and I have to go to the Holy Spirit first, not to myself. Because as a child of God I have been promised a spirit of peace, not anger. I can't give myself that spirit of peace though; the Holy Spirit has to. 


Also, I've been reading the book Radical. I'll leave that for another blog post. But I'm just letting you know now that I hope I'm going to rock your world soon.

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