Keeping Your Cool…When Your Anger Is Hot!: Practical Steps to Temper Fiery Emotions (25 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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Mission: Horror and Humiliation
It began in August when savage violence and ruin decimated the small country. Helen and her fellow missionaries were separated from the Africans they served and placed under guard. “Mama Luka,” as she was lovingly addressed, in reference to Luke the doctor in the Bible, was forceably removed from her mission and taken to a place where she witnessed nuns being mercilessly beaten and humiliated. Helen never knew whether she might be next.
During a ten-week siege, thousands of black natives were butchered. As a result, the whites became enemies of the blacks, and 27 missionaries were slaughtered.
Helen was driven to a house in the jungle, which could be likened to a hell on earth. “Food was scarce; water almost unprocurable… Wickedness surrounded us on all sides; it seemed inevitable that we should be killed,” Helen said.
17
Still, her heart sensed an amazing peace because of a divine realization: “I was being highly privileged to be identified with Christ in a new way, in the way of Calvary.”
18
And Helen would walk in the path of suffering, a grievous sojourn signified by great sacrifice.
One horrific night, Helen was thrown to the ground and beaten, kicked, and then raped.
19
The horror she saw inflicted on the nuns now finally happened to her—her teeth were broken, her ribs bruised, her mouth bloodied, her nose gashed, and her body violated.
She couldn’t understand why all this was happening to her. She literally wanted to die because she knew the brutality that fellow missionaries had experienced. Yet God quietly spoke to her: “Could You thank Me for trusting you with this experience even if I never tell you why?”
“God, I thank You. I haven’t a clue why or how, but I’ll take it from You that You know what You’re doing, that You can never make a mistake. You cannot fail. Your promise must stand true. So, God I’ll thank You for trusting me with this even though I haven’t any idea how anybody could ever be helped by it.”
Soon afterward, Helen was given the death sentence along with the other missionaries. As they were herded away in a group, she had to lean against others to walk because her body had been so brutalized.
When the leader of the rebels spotted her, he asked, “Who made you in that mess?”
She angrily shouted back, “One of your lot!”
The rebel leader shouted, “You’re a liar!”
“I’ll name him for you,” she bravely replied.
So the rebel leader called a people’s court. However, before the tribesmen assembled, he instructed them to yell, “She’s a liar…she’s a liar!” after Helen’s testimony.
The time came for Helen’s trial. She truthfully told the crowd the details of the assault. Then something miraculous happened. When she finished, 800 men began weeping. They recognized this was their doctor speaking. She had birthed their babies, cared for their cuts, and nursed their wounds. Yet to their deep dismay, one of their own had raped her. Their overpowering repentance triggered a spiritual breakthrough never experienced before among them. Hundreds of hearts were touched and people saved because ultimately, they were so grieved by her suffering.
ʺWill You Thank Me, Even If I Never Tell You Why?ʺ
Later, back in her native country of England, Helen became a frequent guest speaker. One evening she felt led by the Lord to refer to her rape, which she rarely did. After her talk, everyone left except for two girls. One girl asked, “Can you speak to my sister? Five weeks ago she was raped. For five weeks she has not spoken a word to anyone.”
The other girl ran toward Helen, sobbing uncontrollably, and flung her arms around her. For three hours this young victim of rape talked nonstop about the incident. Eventually, the two who had shared the same experience parted ways—both with peace in their hearts. What made the difference? The young girl said, “No one had ever told me that I could thank God even if He didn’t tell me why.”
Helen was once again reminded that her life—committed to the Lord as a living sacrifice and shaped by extreme hardship—was firmly in the Master’s hands. He used her faith, her wounds, and her testimony in powerful service to others and Himself.
But that doesn’t mean there weren’t moments of weakness, moments of questioning God, especially about that horrific night of assault and pain. Helen has written movingly of how abandoned she felt the night of her rape and beating. Like the Lord Jesus on the cross, she cried out,
“My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” His answer to her was a removal of the fear as if it had been rinsed out of her—and a strong sense of his arms around her, holding her, and comforting her. She felt as if God were saying, “When I called you to myself, I called you to the fellowship of my suffering (Philippians 3). They are not attacking you. They are attacking me. I’m just using your body to show myself to the people around you.”
20
Helen could have been angry at God for all she suffered—and who would have blamed her? But she chose to place her life—the highs and the lows—in the context of God’s sovereign will and to trust Him in all circumstances.
In fact, Helen even returned to the Congo for another six years of missionary service. Her testimony has inspired thousands of believers to live a life of Christlike service, surrender, and holiness. Her life reflects the heart of 1 Peter 4:19:
“Those who suffer according to God’s will should commit themselves to their faithful Creator and continue to do good.”
How could Helen have the mind-set to endure a massacre, and still have a godly witness? She shared about her surrendered life and giving God absolute control. “If I will allow God all rights to my life, to stir me until He sees I am ready to be applied, I can trust God then, in His perfect timing, to know where He wants to apply me. God does not need to tell us ahead of time. Until we are stirred, we are not ready for application.”
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Helen’s life serves as a testimony to each of us that even the most agonizing hardship can be used for God’s glory. Now, would
you
be willing to trust Him even if He never tells you why?
A poem given to Helen Roseveare as a teenager gave her God’s perspective on the unjust trials she would face throughout her life. A part of that poem reads:
Not till the loom is silent and the shuttles cease to fly
Shall God unroll the canvas and explain the reason why.
The dark threads are as needful in the weaver’s skillful hand
As the threads of gold and silver in the pattern He has planned.
22
Arson: Deliberate Destruction
In every part of the world, arson is considered a very serious crime. To start a dangerous fire on purpose puts people and property in harm’s way. If the criminal is arrested, conviction is usually followed by a lengthy prison sentence.
There are many motives for committing arson:
•
Profit
—to collect an insurance payment for the damaged or destroyed property
•
Punishment
—to get even with someone for another offense
•
Pleasure
—to entertain or perversely satisfy
•
Protection
—to cover or destroy evidence of another crime
People who refuse to extinguish their uncontrolled anger are like arsonists in many respects. They kindle fires in relationships without regard for the consequences. Whether you or someone you know is misusing anger, you can stop sabotaging relationships by discovering
why
—why you are misusing fire in the first place.

 

There are a multitude of sins and painful wounds hidden beneath purposeful, pain-inflicting anger. Uncover the truth…then surrender it to God.
Part Three
FIGHTING FIRE WITH FIRE:
How to Use Anger in Healthy Ways
12
SMOLDERING EMBERS
How to Extinguish the Pain of Unresolved Anger
“A quarrelsome person starts fights as easily as hot embers light charcoal or fire lights wood”
(PROVERBS 26:21 NLT).

 

LAST WINTER, at the end of a long, cold night, I stabbed a metal poker into a pile of ashen coals in my fireplace, only to discover a few briquettes still aglow. Sparkling red shimmers sprayed up from beneath a coat of gray ash, telling me the fire in my hearth was not yet extinguished.
As soft sparks cascaded back toward the ash, my thoughts rewound to the fireworks displays of my youth. As a child, my siblings and I used to spend all our Fourth of July holidays in Idabel, Oklahoma, with my cousins—and an array of bottle rockets, cherry bombs, and other blasting propellants.
When launching a Roman candle, shaped like an eight-inch cylinder, we had been instructed to hold it in the middle and out to the side, angle it upward, light it, and shake it. Yet, after someone lit the fuse on a Roman candle held by my ten-year-old sister Helen, instead of holding it out to the side at a safe distance, she kept it too close to her body, and it backfired! We all ran quickly to help her, but the damage had already been done: Helen was left with a severe burn under her right arm.
Mishandling an exploding firecracker can have dangerous—even disastrous—results. Lingering, unresolved anger can create similar havoc. It can be so deeply submerged in our souls we may no longer feel the heat—but that doesn’t mean the fire isn’t still smoldering. Just when we think all is well, our anger explodes back on us…and those we love. Unfortunately, that’s exactly what happened to Vivian.
Heat Still Bellowing from the Bakery
I first met Vivian one evening after I’d given a seminar on how to resolve persistent anger. She had the panicked look of a woman whose emotional thermostat was set too high.
“I came tonight because I thought I might get some insight into my husband’s behavior when he loses his temper,” she told me. “But something unexpected happened—I saw
myself
in what you said.”
Vivian’s “Aha moment” came when I spoke of unresolved anger hanging around for so long we’ve stopped even being consciously aware of its presence. The fireworks no longer light up the sky, so we think they’ve burned themselves out. But that’s not the case. The emotional pyrotechnics have simply headed underground, boring deep into unguarded areas of our hearts, minds, and emotions, where they continue to simmer and smolder indefinitely.
Such anger still singes us—and others—but in subtle ways that are difficult to trace to the original source.
“I knew you were talking about me,” continued Vivian, a look of anguish on her face. “After all these years, my anger suddenly surfaced. Why haven’t I seen it before now?”
I began to understand as she told more of her story. As a little girl, Vivian loved to bake breads and pastries. By the time she was in high school, she frequently sent her mother out of the kitchen and prepared desserts for the family by herself. She knew she had found her calling and dreamed of one day running her own bakery.
Vivian’s sister, Lorraine, was her polar opposite. While Vivian was creative and spontaneous, Lorraine was serious and sensible. Everyone said she had a head for business.
It was as if God had provided a perfect partnership for success all in one family: Vivian could work the kitchen, and Lorraine could manage the business.
The sisters made a pact to open a neighborhood bakery as soon as Lorraine finished college. But after only two years, Lorraine grew impatient. She told everyone the business courses she took were boring, her professors were fossils stuck in the past, and her classmates were all clueless, bleating sheep.
She felt well-enough equipped to dive into the real world of commerce and get on with it. Lorraine dropped out of school and, through family connections, the sisters found a financial backer for their enterprise. Six months later, they opened a stylish bakery and breakfast bistro in a good location.
“My dream had come true,” Vivian recalled. “I pinched myself every time I saw a line of customers stretching all the way to the door.”

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