Today my 8-year-old started crying in the backseat because, as she said, she wishes she weren’t such an angry person.
She is not angry because of the recent election season. She is angry, most likely, because I am angry. As one of my kin put it, ours is a family of screamers. I have come to think of this trait as our family curse, though I’m not sure all my kinfolk fret over it. Some scream with authority, and some without; some probably fall restfully asleep confident of the buds they’ve nipped, while others very likely follow screaming with self-flagellation. Pretty much all of us, though, nourish hypertrophic organs of righteous indignation.
I need to change this, at least as it extends to me and my daughter. For lots of reasons, some of which I will probably write about later, this needs to change.
So tonight I began, in a move which surely requires no explanation, by googling “Bible verse about conquering anger.” I don’t know if this will surprise you, but I didn’t read far because I quickly became… angry. One site, by a well-known minister, detailed the sinfulness of anger and spoke knowingly about “angry people” belonging to “angry families.”
I already hate my anger though. In fact, I’m angry about my anger, and on a bad day, the whole uroboros-like quality of my condition leaves me feeling infinitely trapped, which is to say, cursed. Damned. So, dear pastor, I do not need you to show me myself on this occasion. I need to see how I can become someone different.
I went to a therapist a couple of times, who told me to try to replace dark thinking with light, by carrying with me index cards, bearing encouraging Bible verses. He emphasized that these should not be the verses which point out my sin, but the ones which give me hope, and reassure me. Then, I should make a point of reading through them, one-by-one, some five times a day. He reassured me that the mechanical nature of the practice was one of its virtues. It is a practice, a technique–something that begins to work on you.
I didn’t do it. For no good reason, I just never got around to digging through the Bible, and looking for encouragement there. I think I probably ate baked goods and watched romantic comedies instead, trying to indulge myself into a better “mood.”
I thought of this verse technique tonight, though, and I believe I’m going to…begin…to try. Following the advice of that therapist, I’m going to avoid the “no” and “stop” verses–the formally negative ones–because I already have internalized their message. I’m going to begin looking instead for the formally positive verses–the ones which show me I can be transformed. I think, then, that instead of looking for “anger,” I will begin by looking in the Bible for those traits which seemed positioned opposite anger. I will let you know what I find, or what others find, and share with me.
This family curse thing is–it touches everyone, because we are all the children of Adam and Eve. I wanted so much to be different, but I’ve stepped into the shoes of my elders to reprise, with my kids, some of the least pleasant scenes from my own past. As specific as my failure seems to me, the parent-to-child replication of sin is very, very old. It seems the definition of humanity, sometimes, but…I want to begin intentionally remembering, that Christ is the new Adam. Here is a verse to help clinch that memory: “For just as through the disobedience of the one man the many were made sinners, so also through the obedience of the one man the many will be made righteous” (Romans 5:9).
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