Anger Feels Productive

This morning I woke up already a little angry. Ava started making noise earlier than I was ready to get up so... I grumbled. Then there were things left out from the night before that I had to clean up (which by the way took about one minute), the trash smelled awful and had to go out and then Ava was being defiant and wouldn't drink her milk. This does not spell catastrophe but end to end those little things started to boil up in me a little anger, a little self-righteous, "I don't deserve this" sort of feeling.

After I put Ava down for her nap and started some laundry, I decided to read some old posts from a blog that I love. This is no ordinary blog but an incredibly insightful and devotional oriented blog from a friend of mine. His name is Tony Pisani, he is a Marriage and Family Therapist and was one of my professors at the University of Rochester Medical Center when I did a short stint in their MFT grad program. He is an amazing man, a believer, and incredibly wise. He gave me a book when I left the program to pursue ministry instead of therapy called "Seeing with New Eyes", a fantastic resource infusing counseling theory and pop-psychology with biblical truth. Anyway, all that to say I admire him and love this blog and what he has to share (the blog address is http://www.biblicalproductivity.org/ for those who want to check out the whole post).

In a post from February 25, 2009 he writes about the "Biblical truth about anger". One sentence that really caught my eye was this, "The feeling that our anger is productive for justice is so seductive". How true! The draw to anger as a way to fix a hurt or wrong doing feels so natural and right sometimes. And yet in James 1:20 we're reminded that, "for the anger of man does not produce the righteousness of God." Even though sometimes it really feels like it might! Secondly, Tony talks about the importance of trusting in God's wrath as an antidote to anger. All sins will be accounted for and brought to justice--we don't need to do that job for him.

Now, all of these "sins" against me this morning were not sins at all but really my own sin in feeling entitled to something better. But, the lessons still stand to help work through those little angers instead of letting them build and build into a day of bitterness. I have a one-year-old and I live with a man. I live in a fallen world. Things are bound to go awry! But I can be joyful in knowing that God is sovereign over it all and that he is calling me to a different way by which I will grow in righteousness.