The Sloshy Mess of Anger
By Christie Thomas
Back in February, we were late getting out to the door to our weekly homeschool co-op, and I still had to pick up some other kids on the way. One of my teenagers was being achingly slow, and I had already reminded him several times that we had to go. Finally, I hollered upstairs for him one last time and went to the garage.
It was one of those bone-chillingly cold weeks we get here in Canada so I didn’t open the garage door right away (as I normally would). Instead, I started the van, then hit the garage door button. My son still wasn’t there, so, in a fury, I started backing out.
BASH!
I crashed right into the bottom of the garage door, knocking that side off the tracks and nearly ripping the top fin off my minivan.
But here’s the kicker. This was the second time I’ve done this! A few years ago, I was in a similar situation - in a rush, with a kid poking along, causing me to get distracted in my anger.
The difference between that first time I bashed into the garage door and this time, was that, even in my intense frustration at doing this again, I was able to hold my tongue and not blame my child. Yes, he had been slow. Yes, he hadn’t listened, but the blame for crashing into the garage door was all mine.
I’m not saying I was chipper, but the Lord helped me hold my tongue, keeping me from lashing out and heaping blame on him in my fury.
My Sloshy Inner Mess
Most of the time when I get angry, it’s not about my children. It’s about ME. When I have no margin, when I am distracted, when I am tired and running late because of my own unpreparedness, I tend to have a short fuse with my precious children.
Sometimes I imagine that I am holding a cup of toxic chemicals in my hands, and I try to carry it carefully, oh so carefully. But when someone knocks up against me, it nudges the cup of toxicity and it sloshes over, injuring the one who bumped me. Of course, I tend to blame him. However, the cup of toxic chemicals sloshes out because of what I’m carrying, not because of the person who bumped me.
Let’s imagine an (all-too-realistic) situation where my kid is hungry before supper so he’s irritable. His irritation bumps up against me and makes me angry. How dare he be so cranky when I’m clearly making him a great meal! So, I yell at him to get out of the kitchen, which then triggers a fear response in him, like maybe the fight response, which causes aggression. So, he goes and shoves his sibling, and now this whole sloshy mess has passed onto yet another person.
What do we do with all this anger inside us?
A lot of parenting gurus would say:
“It’s okay, we all do it. Let’s be real and raw with each other.”
“You’re in good company.”
“Kids are forgiving, they’ll turn out okay.”
In a sense they’re right. There are no perfect parents.
But then again, it’s not okay because 1 John 3:6 tells me that “no one who lives in him keeps on sinning. No one who continues to sin has either seen him or known him” (NIV). God expects us to change and grow.
The Solution to the Slosh
The beautiful truth is that, whether or not this way of parenting was modeled to us, there is a way to change.
The way to stop this whole process is to remember who we are in Christ. We let God clean us from the inside out and replace the toxicity with His goodness, joy, and peace.
He saves us from our sin but then calls us to live in love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control, through the power of the Holy Spirit. Allowing God to work in our hearts will help us become better parents.
The message of Christ is that we don’t have to live in defeat. We don’t have to just accept our failings and allow them to define how we parent.
Through Christ, we have victory…even over the sloshy mess of anger inside us.
Christie Thomas is a child of God, learning to be a wife and mom who lives in the power of God’s Spirit rather than in her own very saggy strength. She’s the author of multiple books for children and families, most recently My First Devotional (for preschoolers) and Little Habits, Big Faith (for moms and dads)! Find her online at Little Shoots Deep Roots. You can also find her on Instagram @littleshootsdeeproots