Keeping Your Cool…When Your Anger Is Hot!: Practical Steps to Temper Fiery Emotions (18 page)

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Authors: June Hunt

BOOK: Keeping Your Cool…When Your Anger Is Hot!: Practical Steps to Temper Fiery Emotions
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2. Defensiveness Preempts Accountability
Here is an unavoidable truth: No one is perfect. Each of us is a work in progress, with room to grow and much to learn. Every day is a new opportunity to gain maturity and wisdom. For that reason, the world is our classroom, and our relationships are among our most valuable teachers. They serve as mirrors in which we can see ourselves more clearly. In countless ways, those closest to us help hold us accountable for our words and actions.
The problem with our defensiveness is that it throws a monkey wrench into the process. We dodge responsibility, missing out on the opportunity to learn from our mistakes. The clamor of combat may drown out the people who we think could possibly hurt us, but it also prevents us from hearing God’s gentle corrections through those He would use to help change us.
Solomon wrote, “He who listens to a life-giving rebuke will be at home among the wise. He who ignores discipline despises himself, but whoever heeds correction gains understanding” (Proverbs 15:31-32). That’s great advice for anyone who uses defensive anger to keep accountability at bay.
3. Defensiveness Makes a Mountain out of Every Last Molehill
Over the years, I have learned to trust the deep wisdom in this simple phrase:
Choose your battles carefully.
This is never more true than when I am angry. To follow this advice, I try to stop before acting on my anger and ask myself:
—Am I in the right?
—What benefit will come from fighting this battle?
—Even if I succeed, will it do more harm than good?
—How would Jesus respond to this situation?
Believe me, I don’t always get it right. But more than once I’ve avoided making a costly mistake by counting the cost before initiating a confrontation. As Jesus said, “Suppose a king is about to go to war against another king. Will he not first sit down and consider whether he is able with ten thousand men to oppose the one coming against him with twenty thousand?” (Luke 14:31).
It’s just common sense, really. Yet when you are ensnared in endless cycles of defensive anger, this kind of strategic thinking is next to impossible. When every offense, no matter how small, feels like a matter of life and death, it is unthinkable to simply let it go. When you haven’t surrendered your past pain to God, you may feel compelled to react to every new threat with fresh anger whether it makes sense or not. Unable to really afford another fight, you are convinced you can’t afford to pass it up either.
A king like
that
, I’m sure Jesus would say, is doomed to defeat—or at least to poverty from constant warfare. The only solution is not confrontation but rather submission…submitting our anger wounds to God’s healing touch. Then we can seek the wisdom of God, surrender all our battles to Him, and trust Him to bring peace and reconciliation.
4. Defensiveness Keeps You from Dealing with the Cause of Anger
After our conversation, Jimmy told Diana he was tired of living in a war zone. He invited her to participate in “peace talks” with him and a counselor who would mediate. It wasn’t easy for her to see past the feeling that she was once again under attack. But she eventually agreed.
Months later, I spoke with Diana about the experience. She said, “The breakthrough came when I realized being defensive and fighting with Jimmy over every little thing was preventing me from seeing the truth: He wasn’t the source of my anger at all. It was like being so focused on the smoke, that I had no idea where the fire was.”
As it turned out, her hidden fire had been burning for a long time. Growing up with three highly competitive older brothers, Diana came to believe she had to work ten times harder than most people just to be considered “good enough.” By the time she went to college, she was already on high alert. But it was there her habit of expressing razor-sharp defensive anger really took hold. As a young graduate student in a field dominated by men, she felt she had been “dropped behind enemy lines.” Unfortunately, her advisors all seemed to be cut from the same chauvinistic cloth, and their critique of her work was often belittling, sarcastic, and overly personal.
“I decided no one would ever treat me that way again,” Diana told me. “The sad thing is I turned into the very sort of angry person I was trying to protect myself from.”
By building impregnable walls out of hyperdefensiveness, Diana had prevented herself from getting to the bottom of why she was mad in the first place. Hardly a day went by when she didn’t find some petty reason to project all her pain and anger onto Jimmy. It was unfair to him and kept her stuck in a self-reinforcing cycle of unresolved anger. Thankfully, she finally realized this negative cycle and began addressing it.
Civil rights leader Martin Luther King, Jr. once said, “Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.”
3
A life of angry defensiveness cannot drive out pain and fear. Only God’s healing grace can do that when we surrender ourselves into His care. Let Him take responsibility for your defense as you retreat into His arms.
Underground Fire: Invisible Sparks
In 2002, an unusual brush fire erupted in western Colorado. Before firefighters contained the blaze, it destroyed more than 12,000 acres of forest, two dozen homes, and came dangerously close to the scenic resort town of Glenwood Springs. Drought conditions across the state made fighting the fire especially difficult.
What made the fire out of the ordinary was not the damage it caused in the end, but how it actually began.

 

The spark that triggered the inferno didn’t come from a campfire, or a lightning strike, or a carelessly discarded match. In fact, the fire had already been burning for more than three decades—
underground
—in a smoldering seam of coal. There are many such unseen fires burning around the world, in subterranean coal seams and peat deposits. They can suddenly erupt unexpectedly at the surface, threatening homes and lives.

 

It is equally possible for anger to simmer away beneath the surface of your life—out of sight, out of mind—until one day it surfaces and consumes you. With God’s help, you can excavate those past wounds that have been there since childhood and allow His love to bring hope and healing to your heart.
9
FIRE AND ICE
How a Controlling Spirit Fuels Chronic Anger
“A gentle answer turns away wrath,
but a harsh word stirs up anger”
(PROVERBS 15:1).

 

BECAUSE OF OUR unprecedented access to technology, to some degree we all have control issues—so much so that we are unaware of its influence on how we think and the role it plays in our problems with runaway anger.
At the touch of a button or the flick of a switch, we exercise a level of command over our environment that our ancestors would never have imagined possible. We have thermostats to regulate room temperature, light bulbs to “extend” the day, timers on everything from coffeepots to automatic sprinkler systems, and cars and planes that can condense months of travel by foot into a few hours’ journey.
Kids and adults alike play home video games and watch what happens in the world using a device called a “controller.” We
order
our food,
manage
our careers,
master
our money, and
secure
our retirement. The list could go on and on. Clearly, we’ve made control a way of life.
The Cop Who Copped an Attitude
One Christmas holiday years ago when I was a youth director, a family in the church I served invited me and two friends to their vacation home in Crested Butte, Colorado—they wanted to teach us how to ski! What a perfect place to spend time with friends and celebrate the season…or so I thought.
On Christmas evening, with great excitement, Sandy, Barbara, and I packed my car and headed out from Dallas, taking turns driving the long stretches of open road. About three-fourths of the way into our trip, I was behind the wheel when we were coming down mountainous Raton Pass into Colorado. I looked in the rearview mirror and saw what sparks apprehension in most of us—the flashing lights of a patrol car.
“Oh, no!” I nearly shouted. “I can’t believe it!” Barbara and Sandy looked back and saw the pulsating bursts of the police lights. In unison, they let out a groan.
Immediately I looked at the speedometer. I breathed a huge sigh of relief when I saw I wasn’t exceeding the speed limit. (I’ve been known to say, “I don’t drive fast; I just fly low.” Fortunately that morning, I wasn’t flying!)
“I know I wasn’t speeding,” I said confidently and guilt-free as I pulled onto the shoulder of the highway. After the police car came to a stop behind me, I opened the driver’s side door and hopped out.
“Lady, get back in that car!” the officer barked. He punctuated his command with a pointed finger stabbing the air in my direction. “Now!”
Feeling scolded, I retreated back into my car. The officer sat in his car for a long time, doing who knows what, while the three of us waited in silence. Finally, he swaggered up to the car in his uniform—kneehigh boots, pants flaring at the thighs like British hunting breeches, and sporting the kind of hat forest rangers wear.
He leaned over to survey the car’s occupants, then growled, “License and registration.” After handing him the papers, he looked at them and said matter of factly, “I’m going to ticket you for speeding.”
Though surprised, I tried to sound cooperative. “Sir, I’m sure I wasn’t speeding.”
For several long seconds, he just glared at me as if I’d said the stupidest thing he’d ever heard. Finally, in a tone dripping with condescension, he said, “Lady, with these hazardous road conditions, you should have dropped your speed by ten miles per hour. That’s the law.”
“Officer, I’m sorry. I’ve never heard of this law.”
He had his quick retort in place. “Ignorance of the law is no excuse! You were driving recklessly, endangering yourself and others. I’m going to issue you a citation. Don’t blame me—blame yourself.”
I was incensed.
A ticket for not slowing down, even though I was going the speed limit? That’s ridiculous!
But I still tried to explain, “Well sir, in Texas…”
Mid-sentence, he turned on the heels of his shiny boots and strutted back toward his car. Immediately I felt my cheeks get hot, my heart start pounding, and my blood pressure soar.
Let me point out I have tremendous respect for law enforcement officers, but this one had a bad attitude to match his big ego. “I think he needs to read
How to Win Friends and Influence People
,” I muttered sarcastically.
“He must have had a nasty fight with his wife this morning!” Barbara quipped.
Sandy—never at a loss for words—upped the ante. “No, I think he’s in a foul mood because his uniform makes him look like Dudley Do-right!” I mustered a chuckle even though I was fuming. Then things got worse.
Returning to our car, he demanded, “Follow me back into town. You have to pay your fine now.”
“But…can’t I just send a check in later?”
“No,” he insisted. “Follow me—
now
.”

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