untangling anger

I’m not an angry person, only an irritable, grumpy, frustrated person. I’m not prone to rage or fury, only a quietly simmering annoyance. I would have sworn those weren’t the same things, rage and irritation, before I had children. It takes a lot to make me mad, that’s what I would have said. Not a lot to annoy me, though. But that’s not the same thing.

When I only had one child, I still maintained my belief that I was not an angry person. I was calm. My baby might throw a fit, but I didn’t. I could be patient. I could wait, or discipline, or engage, or whatever I deemed the situation required. I never felt like a good or competent mother, but I prided myself on my ability to stay steady when Dean fussed.

Ha! 

I have two children now, and unexpectedly, I’m an angry mom. Over everything. Behavior at the grocery store: instead of holding on to my cart, there they go, racing through the aisles squealing and playing an unauthorized game of hide-and-seek. Bedtimes: instead of going to sleep, they sneak out, play, claim hunger or thirst or fear, and rarely stay in bed until morning. I even get angry over slowness: if they drag their feet going to the car, finding dusty toys rolled under the shelves or shoes they forgot they wore last season; if they need to pee before nap but go everywhere except the bathroom; if they dart upstairs to grab socks and come down with a bent card from a game they don’t know how to play; if dinner grew cold half an hour ago and I’m tired of sitting at the table.

I feel like I changed, like I lost my control, my calm. Like I went from mildly irritated to easily angry. I could blame my daughter; everything changed after she was born. When I only had one person to engage with, I could handle myself. I can’t handle it anymore. When they’re both disobeying, or fighting with each other, or getting on my nerves, I feel like I’ve been bisected and what spills out of my body is pure anger. Before I got cut in half, I was Pharisaical in my ability to look peaceful. As a mom of two, I’m exposed.

June isn’t the problem; she merely yanked it to the surface. I am an angry person. I didn’t become one when my circumstances changed. I just became aware.

My annoyance when my family pokes around in the morning and makes us late for church isn’t justifiable or innocuous. My frustration when my husband miscommunicates isn’t okay. My grumbling when my quiet time in the morning is interrupted might make sense, but isn’t made right. For most of my life, I’ve been angry, only it has seemed small and manageable.

Now it is not small and not manageable. But the temptation is no longer to misdiagnose myself (how could I, when the rage is fast and hot?), but to mislabel the anger. My temptation now is to look at what provokes my fury: it is the unrighteousness of my family. Their sin has nourished my rage. I’m only reacting. And if I’m reacting to their unrighteousness, that must, by default, make my reaction righteous anger. Correct? Anger at sin—that’s good, right? Fury at wrongdoing—justified, always?

I find myself heated when what I witness is cruelty. When one kid hurts the other for no reason, or hides a toy the other is looking for. And that is wrong. It is so obviously wrong that I focus on the wrongness of the child’s act—the inflicted pain, the meanness—and not my response. If I yell and snatch away a toy, they were asking for it. I’m not sinking to their level, I’m merely dealing with the problem in haste.

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In Scripture, we tend to think of Jesus overturning tables as our example of expressed anger. And, since that was both a violent and noisy scenario, we may feel righteous when we respond by turning over a table and watching the crayons or the Legos scatter. But I think, most likely, our anger isn’t righteous. We’re not infuriated on the Lord’s behalf. We’re mad that our children are sinning and their need for discipline and correction steals from our precious, never-enough time. We’re angry that the progress we thought we witnessed has dissolved. 

What I need in those moments is not to find a way to express my anger and call it righteous. I need to slow down. Exodus 34:6 describes God as “merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness.” Nehemiah 9:17 adds that he is a God “ready to forgive” in addition to being slow to anger. In Psalm 103:8, David echoes Moses: “the Lord is merciful and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love.”

The picture we see, over and over in Scripture, is not one of a God who leaps from heaven to strike whenever we make a mistake. It is one of a God who is slow. And I think a better way to face our own anger is not to try to sift through what of it is righteous and what is unrighteous, but to stomp on the brakes. Maybe there is a way to be angry and not sin (Psalm 4:4), but that is not what is happening in my house. 

My anger isn’t righteous, even when it springs from someone else’s unrighteousness. And my haste to anger isn’t a sign of the extent of someone else’s wrongdoing, it’s a gauge to test the content of my heart. It’s already hot in there, it’s already on the verge of spilling out.

I’m not going to try to take my anger and shape it into something I can call holy. I’m going to try to slow down. To press the brakes. And whether I’m mildly annoyed or seething in rage, my prayer is that I will respond in mercy, grace, and love.