A Prayer For Those Caught In Anger And Suffering

My Great Grandmother Gertie and Myself, about the year 2002.

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 Prayer To Be Free Of Resentment and Bitterness

I just read a devotional about God’s Grace being misunderstood because it is not a wage, but a gift. http://odb.org/2014/04/05/not-counting. It struck me as very apt and I loved that it explained something I haven’t ever really understood about that parable. I looked at it from a worldly stance and just was always stumped by the fact that it made no sense in our world of money and finance and keeping score. So I’m happy for a chance to get to understand it better and think more deeply on it. Also, it ties in to what I want to pray about today since I’m feeling an epic battle in my own heart against resentment and bitterness.

 

 

Proverbs 4:23 ESV

Keep your heart with all vigilance, for from it flow the springs of life.

Job 7:11 Therefore I will not refrain my mouth; I will speak in the anguish of my spirit; I will complain in the bitterness of my soul.

(I know this verse isn’t very uplifting but I feel it’s important to remember that God doesn’t say we can’t complain, He doesn’t say we can’t be bitter, but He is there to help us get over it, come through it, and remember that His Grace is all we need).

1 John 2:9 He that said he is in the light, and hates his brother, is in darkness even until now.

Mark 11:25 ESV 

And whenever you stand praying, forgive, if you have anything against anyone, so that your Father also who is in heaven may forgive you your trespasses.”

 

I love this last verse as well because I’ve always heard it in the prayer which says “forgive us our sins as we forgive those who sin against us.” Now, I know that basically says the same thing but because it is rote to me, after hearing it in church since childhood, I hadn’t really thought it through. I definitely hadn’t thought through the idea that we needed to forgive others in order to be forgiven. One brings up the other. It’s easy to feel we know we should forgive, and to put it off as too hard or to wait for God to do the work of forgiveness for us, but we need to do that ourselves. We must do our own part and continually pray for the person or people we mean to forgive, pushing away our bitterness or resentment for them every single time it comes back up and praying the Lord helps us truly feel the forgiveness in our hearts. For me, anyhow, forgiveness always has started with the action of acting like I’ve forgotten the trespass, and after a long time of that, the heart will follow those acts.

 

Please, Pray with me.

Lord, we come to you today humbled by all we didn’t quite understand, and all we took for granted for so long. We are so glad you’ve given us Your Word to study and learn from and that You are our continual teacher for our whole earthly lives and eternity after. Lord, we ask you today to come into our hearts, teach us to truly forgive, Lord, and remind us to be happy to do the legwork it takes to make it a wholehearted forgiveness. Help us to remember that our bitterness and resentment are of our own making, and You have counseled us to guard our hearts and we so often don’t do it, Father! Help us to understand it’s our responsibility to look to Your Word, our spiritual mirror showing us who You say we are, and find what You have said we should do in each situation. We are charged with the stewardship of our earthly bodies, Lord, and we so easily exclude from this the emotions contained in them. Let us be mindful of that, Abba, and be mindful that we are in charge of guarding our hearts against the negative things. Only true forgiveness, over and over again, can stop our hearts becoming bitter and resentful, and only our true forgiveness of others opens the door for Your true forgiveness of us. We Are So Grateful For Your Grace, Lord! We know we cannot earn it, we know that just like a child who apologizes we often think if we ask forgiveness we can erase a wrong, but the wrong still existed and only Your Grace saved us from feeling the sting of our due punishment for it, Lord. It is a wonder we can not fully comprehend but are so fearfully in awe of. We declare right now, by the power You have given us through the Spirit, that we will be bitter no more, resentful no longer, and we will not live feeling trapped when we know we have such freedom in you! Thank You so, Father. In the Name of Your Son Jesus Christ, Amen.

A Prayer To Place Responsibility Where It Belongs

New International Version
Then Jesus said to them, “Give back to Caesar what is Caesar’s and to God what is God’s.” And they were amazed at him. Mark 12:17

 

It’s a bit personal and not what I usually do on this blog, but we’re in melt down time around this house lately and I need somewhere to put all this angst, so I’m talking to you, Dear Readers. 

 

All my life I’ve fed my ego on being the good girl, the teacher’s pet, the good daughter. I don’t know what it was that made me so very determined and from such a young age and for such a long time that if I was just GOOD ENOUGH then everything else would be okay. I think the root of it comes from a deep and lasting feeling of unworthiness. I remember being very very young, maybe six or seven or even younger and hearing some adult tell me how much I should be appreciative of how good I had it, and they told me of kids who didn’t have it good. I knew lots of kids like that anyhow, who had rough little tough lives. Anyhow, I don’t remember who was talking to me or even more specifically what they said, but I remember getting very scared and feeling very much like they were right. I had a great, cushy, lovely, even idyllic life as a child, and I couldn’t figure out why I had that kind of life and kids around me had lives so different as to look terrifying to me.

And from then on, I built myself a nice personal mythology of sorts. This idea that I could make the world better, make people happier, by being a good girl was then reinforced my whole life by people who only thought they were doing the natural and right thing of positively reinforcing the good behavior they saw in me. But for me, for some reason, it became a perverted thing. It became a bit of me trying to think I was in control, trying to compete with God.

You see, for me, it meant if I could just be good enough, perfect enough, behave in the right way, I could fix people, I could make them happy, and I could RULE THE WORLD BWAHAHAHAHA… okay, not that last part, but you get it.

I’ve realized many times that this isn’t right, and as an objective, mostly sane person I have been trying to work my way back to realizing and living like I know it isn’t good, or true, or right. I have asked for forgiveness for it many times. But in the squirrelly way of the workings of a modern human brain, I can’t just blow down the wall of the room where I keep the bat-nut crazy butt part of me that still believes this. I have to remove it brick by brick, and it’s a lot of taking one brick down and finding two jumped up in its place. Still, I’m working on it. 

For me, I think one major obstacle to this has been that I still live with my mother. She and my little sister who is disabled. I joined a siblings of disabled people’s group once and talked to some people on there about how desperately responsible I always felt and how awful it was to feel trapped in a life you didn’t choose. At the time, I wasn’t yet married and I despaired of ever meeting anyone who could be good to me, a partner for my life, and understand my commitment to my little sister. After hearing about a lot of failed marriages where people thought they’d met that person or married a person just to escape the responsibility they felt for their disabled siblings, I left the group with an even more despairing heart.

Well, I met the man a few years later, after so much praying and even resigning myself to living with my mother, her husband, and my sister for the rest of my life. I had myself convinced that taking care of April and never asking for or really seeking anything my heart wanted (a husband, a partner for life who would put my well being first, a child, oh a child!) was what God wanted of me. I paid close attention to all those verses about being a servant and I thought I was doing that. 

I was so wrong. The part of me that God had planted the dream of a family in kept creeping back open. And finally, I asked. I truly prayed with an open heart and I put myself out there into the world in a way I hadn’t before, believing that this time if God didn’t send me someone, He really never meant to. I might have even been challenging Him. And He sent me my Stephen, and we had our Alice, and things have been so good. There’s a little piece of my heart now that is blooming and bright and like a springtime window opened into a dusty room that had been closed for a very long winter. 

And it isn’t that I don’t love my sister or my mother, but these new things, this little bit of an open heart, has led to so much more. My husband and I have started studying books and the Bible and seeking God’s plan for us, and asking Him to put us solidly on His path for our lives, and changes have started. They’re painful. Parts of me that haven’t breathed in the light for a long time are having a hard time facing all this bright sunny day stuff.

I am having a hard time giving back to Caesar what is Caesar’s. Or, in this case, giving back to my Mother what was always my Mother’s: her child. April Ann is not my child. I love her more as a sister than I ever dared think I would, but it is a relief to be able to slowly start accepting that she is not my responsibility. Not in the way I had myself believing before. Not to the exclusion of any of my own dreams and happiness. And not solely. I truly felt for many years that if I didn’t look out for April’s best interest, maybe no one would. And it isn’t anyone else’s fault that I thought that way, it’s the fault of my own danged, oversized, ridiculous ego and idea of myself. It is my own sin that let me think that way. I am so so repentant of that. 

The funniest part of all of this is that I also realized I have long felt responsible for my own mother. I’ve kind of realized that in small ways for a long time, but to really think on it now, it’s appalling. How did I let my own mind make such a crass and stupid role reversal? It wasn’t her fault, that’s certain. One thing I am responsible for is my own self and my own thinking, so it’s my fault. I let this happen. And now, even though it’s painful in some ways, I’ve got to let the healing and changing back and better thinking happen.

I have to let it be that I am only responsible for me. There’s no other way. I can’t keep killing myself trying to do and be the impossible, and it only takes me farther from God because it is blasphemous, horrid thinking that leads me to believe I can do things without Him. I am nothing, no thing at all, without Him. And I am only any thing because He has called me so. I am His child, and I am loved, and that should be enough for my ego. 

I am letting it all go, and letting God be responsible for His children, without my interference.

Will you pray with me?

 

Lord, I know I have sinned. I know I have too often put my own importance above You. I know I have not turned to you when I should have, I know I have too often thought I could go it alone. I see now that I was building myself up, but it was tearing You down and not allowing your presence in my life. Please, Lord, work in me. Make me wholly and truly Your vessel. Give me a clean heart, and heal my broken ways, Father, and allow me to realize that any time I feel the need to fix, to falsely cheer, to claim responsibility for things I can not, I need to instead turn to You. I give it all to You tonight, Father, and I pray You forgive me my sins and help me to establish new and healthy ways of being. I Thank You because I know that in your timelessness You have already brought me victory over this battle within. I Thank You that you have given me the clear view of where to put my feet to stay on Your path. I am so grateful that You are working within me in this way, stretching me and making me to step out in Faith, knowing that hurts are temporary, but my relationship with You is the only eternal thing. I am grateful that I can fail in front of you, Lord, and You only love me for it. The only truly unconditional love is from You, God, and I need to stop thinking I can manufacture it myself. I Thank You for teaching me that, and for healing me from my intrusive, enabling, egotistical habits. In Jesus’ Holy Name, Amen.