Holding on to Hostility

"I was consumed by the fire,
But now I'm washed in the blood..."

-Blake Kimble

I used to get angry with the simplest things; traffic, phone solicitors, rude service station attendants, telephone menus, the list was as long as the day. Which meant I spent most of my day being angry. 

Hostility is debilitating. It wears you out and the stress is infectious as well. Your family members will be victims of your fatigue. 

I started losing my anger when I discovered that forgiveness (another form of love) wasn't doing a favor for the person who wronged you. It was about healing yourself. As you forgive others all the bitterness associated with it wanes. Over time, you don't even remember what you were angry about in the first place. It's therapy at no cost. I believe that most psychotherapy and psychotheraputic drugs could be done away with if we were taught the fine art of forgiveness. 

It is easy to get caught up in the heat of a moment, and your perspective disappears. Little things like traffic, phone solicitors, rude service station attendants, telephone menus become disproportionately large. When it's really a few minutes of your day. Those little things pile up over time, being internalized, rather than being thrown away. You're soon cluttered with so much anger, spite, and emotional garbage that you can't function without feeling your anger driving you every minute of the day. Anger becomes your sole motivation and constant companion.

Anger seldom makes good choices for the future, and the frustration found at the consequences of these decisions compounds the anger. It's a negative feedback loop, and you're its primary victim.
It's been a slow process for me, and I confess, an ongoing one. I have made many regrettable choices in the past motivated by anger, and the results lead to only more fuel to feed the fire. It brought me to a point where I had become so utterly broken that I knew that only God was capable of changing my course. It was there and then that I cried out to God and plead between my sobs, "God, make me whole again", and He replied. I know many Christians experienced the depth of this utter and vast emptiness that cannot be filled by the works or words of man. This is when they took their first step in not having to carry the load alone. When they first began to hand over the reigns to the One who Reigns. Haltingly, at first, but slowly with increasing confidence, we allow God to make our choices, choices made in love.

It's not all rainbows and unicorns, there are still all the other choices you already made to deal with, but you can begin to make progress to clean those up when you're not being buried in new more egregious consequences on a daily basis. I suppose, it's learning to understand that the red check marks on your homework aren't something your teacher did to hurt you, but rather that they are opportunities to learn something you didn't know before. The question is, do we avail ourselves of those opportunities or do we clench our jaw at the teacher?

Some day, I will tell you about the reply that God gave me that day when I wept in the woods. As for now, forgive me, forgive others, and forgive yourself. Give up the reigns and stop holding on to hostility, it is only a small part of your burden that you have to carry. Leave the rest to God.