on anger

Sometimes I go days at a time without the desire/time/ability to construct a decent blog entry. Other times, I feel like I can't record enough of my thoughts on paper (or in cyberspace... whatever). Anyway... apparently this is one of the latter times.

Do you ever have a realization that you should have had a year ago? Or maybe even more... years ago, sometimes. I feel like this happens to me a lot. I had one of those about ten minutes ago, and I feel like the best way for me to put my thoughts in order is to try to write them down.

I think that Satan uses anger as an incredibly powerful tool to disrupt my spiritual life. I feel like this is probably obvious, but I just put it together today. When things are going well, or have the potential to go well, I think Satan has discovered that he can take someone, give them certain characteristics to make me angry, and let my emotions run their course. I find this sort of funny, because I think I am generally a pretty easy-going person. However, I think that Satan is aware that there is a potential for anger in my life, and he figured out how to trigger it. This happened a year ago; my spiritual life stalled out until I could get over this HUGE roadblock of anger. The thing I never thought about today was that the anger really came into my life full force soon after the fall retreat, the time when someone sat me down, listened to my pain, and told me they loved me. The time I see as a turning point in the way I viewed community, especially the importance of opening up to a family of believers. I got so mad, that it was, at times, paralyzing to my walk. I couldn't focus on God because I couldn't focus on anything but my anger.

It's happening again, but this time is different. Things are going well here, and I love it. But one person has, in the course of the past week, repeatedly upset me with her actions. I guess it's not important what she is doing - that's not anything I can control. I know I can't control the actions and behaviors of others; I can, however, choose my response. I can choose to cave in to Satan's call for anger, or I can ask God to lift me above the anger and treat this person with love. She WILL be a part of the same activities that I'm involved with, and there are times (ie, later this afternoon) when it will be the two of us at a table with someone who isn't sold on Christianity... someone who takes all she knows about God and Christians from the people she interacts with. So, at the table today, I want God to be sitting right next to me. I NEED Him to be.

I know that Satan sees something he wants to stop, and I know that the only way I can get through it is by turning to God. So, I hope and pray that I can turn to Him. It's hard, but I don't want anger to control me. I don't want anger to keep me from a great conversation (or anything else) that could impact me or someone I care about.