We’re working on anger in my house. And it’s yet another time when I start praying, thinking the seed of these problems lies in someone’s else’s heart, and God says “No, no, honey, let’s look at you, let’s fix you up.”
God is so personally interested in us. He has no worries about fixing outward problems for us. He knows they will fix themselves, if we let Him fix our hearts.
If we let Him make us more like His Son, then we become holier and more righteous by degrees, and by those degrees, we are drawn to Him, closer and closer in intimate relationship.
I put the photo of my Great Grandma and I up because I was thinking of her today.
She’s only one of two of my Great Grandmothers who I know had marriages end because of anger. Who knows where the anger in our family started? I surely don’t, but I can trace a lot of it back through all the stories I do know. Whether it’s to do with resentful women hiding anger or running from it or pretending they weren’t ever angry, to men who had outburst after outburst, or slow burning rage that ruined relationships and kept the world in retreat. I so often think of it.
What I know of my husband’s family had the same threads running through it in different ways.
And I pray, desperately, that our marriage, our children, will be where it ends. Let us be the last generation of our families cursed by anger that causes sin, Lord. And let us be the first who gain instead Your promises realized!
And in that relationship, not only do problems begin to come around less and less, they matter less and they phase your heart less. The next storm comes with less fear and less worry. The blankness of an unknown future cannot make you anxious, of you really know the One Who Has Pulled Me From Every Past Pit and Cliff and Valley And Hopeless Place!
We are going to counseling with one of our Church’s Pastors, we are going to start a video series about anger from a Christian perspective and fixing it with Christian principles.
We’ve been here before, and these are problems many people face daily, monthly, yearly, and especially during times in the world like these, so I thought I’d just talk about it some here and say a prayer for all of us dealing with this same problem.
Lord,
Help us to use our anger as the indicator and tool it is and to deal with the underlying issues that cause it.
Let us peel back the onion skin layers just like we are Shrek, Lord, and really get to the center of ourselves.
Help us to give that center to You for eternal safekeeping, Lord, so that we know in this world we can be honest, forthright, quick to answer, and committed to what answers we do give. We can learn to be vulnerable to those around us, knowing You ever guard our eternal souls and that any bad thing they attempt will be turned to our good and dealt with in Your justice.
Let us speak wisely and wait on Your guidance before action so that we may remain sure of ourselves.
Knowing that all we can control in our lives is ourselves, please let us keep ourselves centered strongly in the direction of seeking You always, so that we aren’t tilting at windmills and trying to control others.
Lord, help us to deal with other people’s anger the way You ask us to, with forbearance and forgiveness and an unwillingness to be quick to anger or offense.
In Jesus’ Holy Name, Amen
A Grateful Wife's Prayers 