gas stove anger
Click click click BOOM. Every time I cook anything on the stove, it starts with these sounds, with a little flame, with a whoosh of blue fire, with the faint scent of gas. It isn’t like our old electric range, which was sluggish, flat, and flameless. This is quick to ignite, and there’s no way to miss it. With our old stove, I’d leave the house and fret about forgetting to turn the range off. But my husband assures me that won’t happen now: I can’t miss the fire, I can’t miss the sound. It’s clear the heat is on. Even after it’s lit, I can hear the little hissing, the puff puff puff.
Ours has always been a house roiling with emotion. My husband feels everything deeply. My changing body, my sputtering ovaries and undulating hormones, these fling me here and toss me there. My son can lurch from calm and quiet to shrieking in rage with little provocation, and he’s only six but is no stranger to slamming a door. My daughter doesn’t share the intensity of his anger, but she does burst into tears with as much ease. Sometimes it is a holy sorrow: she sobs in remorse, regret, repentance. And sometimes it is just because she has a four-year-old heart, tender and new and delicate.
This is good, I tell myself. We don’t dismiss feelings. We don’t minimize. We don’t invalidate. We don’t confuse. We talk talk talk about how we feel feel feel. We dissect, squint at, pry apart, label. What caused this feeling, which then created that reaction? Where did this spiral? Why?
I don’t know, though. Maybe this isn’t so good. Is the range always lit? Is the air always permeated with a tiny whiff of gas? Is there always a murmur in the background, no matter how quiet, of heat?
Our conversations always circle back to this: I feel this way because you did that. I experience this emotion when I hear this tone of voice. I respond like that when you say those words.
We can always articulate. We can explain. We spend so much time examining these things that ignite inside of us, that burn burn bun; we can tell you every little detail. We can tell you what time it was when we first click click clicked and we can tell you what made that first spitting flame. We remember.
Maybe we are not lashing out; maybe the first whoosh has subsided into the puff puff puff of annoyance or impatience. We can recognize the fires of rage and, usually, repent. If given a little time and space, our son usually comes around on his own, contrite, asking for forgiveness. Our daughter transitions from stubborn rebellion to penitence with more drama; one second she’s scrunching her nose and jabbing her hands on her hips, and the next she’s crumpling and weeping.
I hear myself telling them you’re not in trouble for being angry. But you can’t act like that when you’re mad. You can’t scream at your sister when she knocks over your Lego tower. You can’t hit your brother when he grabs the colored pencil you wanted to use. You can’t threaten never to play with each other again when someone abruptly ends the game. Even if you’re angry, you can’t do that.
But maybe that’s wrong. Maybe anger is only okay if it’s righteous, and how often, in how many of these little daily circumstances, is my family experiencing holy wrath? How much of this anger flares not from a love of what is right and good, but a love of self and comfort? Maybe righteous anger stems not from recognizing injustice—my children experience plenty of injustice in their own relationship—but from a deep love of what is true. Maybe the wrath of God is as much a love of holiness as a hatred for perversion. Maybe the times I say you’re not in trouble for being angry and then go on to focus on the behavior is a lopsided way to parent, because maybe they shouldn’t be angry, maybe their rage burns in their disordered, immature, Christ-in-the-periphery loves. Maybe they’re angry because they’re tiny but they do worship whole-heartedly, and so often the object of their affection is a physical thing within their grasp.
What do they love? Getting their way? Having their little world flourish without disruption?
Well, I love those things, too.
I’ve never considered myself an angry person, because I very rarely feel true rage. But the dial on my stove is turned down low; it’s not turned off. The flame is small, but constant. I’m easily annoyed, but that’s not anger, right? I’m frustrated when I mop the floors and all of a sudden a muddy dog and kids who were playing with the water hose in the yard run inside and leave reddish footprints on the slippery hardwoods. I’m exasperated when I give instructions that seem so simple—be kind don’t fight I’m only going to collect the eggs—and a few brief minutes pass before I hear the sounds of chaos roaring in the house. I am not screaming, I am not furious. I am justified, right? My thoughts are interrupted by the constant hey mom hey mom hey mom hey mom and when I answer in a snippy tone, tearing my attention from my truly important tasks, I’m met with an inane question like, “do you like the number negative seven or the number eleven better?”
In his Sermon on the Mount, Jesus broadens the sixth commandment: “You have heard that it was said to those of old, ‘You shall not murder; and whoever murders will be liable to judgment.’ But I say to you that everyone who is angry with his brother will be liable to judgment; whoever insults his brother will be liable to the council; and whoever says, ‘You fool!’ will be liable to the hell of fire.”[1]
I knew, vaguely, that Jesus equated murder with anger. But I had never truly paid attention to the entire verse: whoever insults his brother and whoever says “you fool!” are lumped together with bloodshed. Anger is tangled with insults and judgment. Wrath is related to verbal daggers and unkind speech. The Bible does not appear to sever emotion from behavior as neatly as I have in my house: here are your amoral feelings, here are your immoral actions.
Maybe how we feel is important. Maybe how we feel—whether it is boiling fury or simmering resentment or bubbling annoyance—is inextricably knotted up with what we love and what we worship. Maybe I should not read be angry and do not sin as Paul’s approval of a certain emotion so long as my behavior remains acceptable. Maybe I should read Ephesians 4:26-27 in the same way I read Matthew 5:48: be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect. Can I actually attain perfection? Can I actually be angry without sinning? Maybe I should be meditating on James 1:19-20: “Know this, my beloved brothers: let every person be quick to hear, slow to speak, slow to anger; for the anger of man does not produce the righteousness of God.”
Before I focus on “not sinning” when I’m angry, I ought to focus on being quick to hear, slow to speak, and slow to anger. Instead of blazing past the first two—who needs to be quick to hear and slow to speak as long as you can justify your feelings?
I do not believe that emotions are always sinful. But sometimes, shockingly, unexplainably, I forget that I am sinful. I am caught in the halfway place between justification and glorification. I am declared righteous and yet still losing it over the hey mom hey mom hey moms.
It is time to turn the dial off.
[1] Matt 5:21-22
