A common theme of my experience on the race has been that the Lord has brought up a lot of unexpected things. Someone asked me about this on one of my old blogs because I mentioned it. Some of these things include pride, leadership, and anger. That last one is what this blog is about.
If you’ve known me long enough then you know that when I was little I had some serious anger issues. I yelled a lot, and I hit kids at school, to name a couple things. As I grew older, I was able to put a better cap on it, and I thought that was fixing it entirely. As it turns out I was wrong. I did not fix it, and so the Lord brought it up with me to actually fix it. He wanted to do it together, and while at first I didn’t want to, I eventually learned how sweet it is walking hand in hand with the Lord through our struggles.
It started while I was still in Ethiopia. During our midpoint debrief I said that I wanted to grow in patience and self-control. That was God’s queue. I’ve found that he often waits until we ask for things to bring us into a hard season. When we came back from debrief I was just…. angry. All the time, and I didn’t know why. It peaked during my squad’s healing night. I was overwhelmed with it and physically ran away from our house. After one of my teammates chased after me and I sat with the Lord weeping and crying out he finally told me something!
“Go back inside.”
Not the earth shattering moment with God I had been hoping for. But in trying to be obedient, I went back inside. I sat at one of the dining tables and put my head in my arms, hoping not to be noticed. People noticed, however, and tried to check on me. I told them I was fine. I didn’t want to be bothered. But God definitely wanted to bother me.
Finally after people praying for me, my teammate washing my feet, and my squad leader reading scripture to me, I heard something say to me, “The Lord will preserve you.” And at that moment, I realized I needed help. Not just from the Lord, but from the church as well. So I got up, as timid as could be, walked into the center of our prayer night and said, “Guys, I need healing from my anger.”
That set in motion a series of teachings that the Lord has been walking me through. He’s been teaching me to bring my anger to Him and letting Him take it from me. He’s been showing me the roots of my anger so that we can pull it out together.
In other words: I’m healed. And being healed. All at the same time. And one of the most comforting things about this is that I know I can take these lessons into the rest of my life and, with the Lord’s guidance, get rid of other bad fruits in my life.
Who knows what’s next?
