Temper, temper!

I have a terrible temper.

Most people don't believe this about me.  Generally I'm a pretty sunshiny, Pollyanna type of person who skips around surrounded by chirping birds, crowned by rainbows in a sky where the only clouds have sequined outlines of silver.  My little world is a happy place and I stay there as much as possible.  But I don't always stay there. Oh, no.  Sometimes unpleasantness creeps in, embedding itself under my skin, irritating more and more with every breath until it becomes so difficult to ignore that my happy little world dissolves into a cacophony of dissonance, thunderbolts and lightning storms that leaves me gritting my teeth and digging my fingernails into my palms. 

Now don't think I'm easily angered.  I do my best to let things roll off my back and focus on the big picture, asking myself "In the grand scheme of things, will this really matter?"  So when the steam starts coming out of my ears, be assured it's been building for quite a while, which might explain the level of reaction when it finally comes. 

So I find myself wondering...is this healthy?  Is it normal?  I never really had a positive example of how to handle anger when I was a kid and, more than anything, I want to avoid the constant violent outbursts that punctuated life in those days.  Then I come across this:

But now you must put them all away: anger, wrath, malice, slander, and obscene talk from your mouth.
—Colossians 3:8
 
and things start to fall into place.  While I have a bit of pride over the fact that I am fairly slow to anger, the reality is, that's not good enough.   Temper, anger, whatever you want to call it - it's not from God.  It's a very real example of how easy it is to slip into the "me" mentality when my goal is to always be looking up.  If I give in to the foot-stomping and muttering, I'm grasping tools that, instead of helping me out of the pit of temper I'm in, will tear and bite into the ground to create a chasm of misery.  Looking at things that way, the answer to my question is obviously no, this is not healthy and this is not good.
 
It's never easy for me to admit I'm wrong, especially when I know I'm right.  My angry thoughts may well be justified.  Let's face it, people in general are not kind, they are not altruistic and they often hurt others in order to benefit themselves.  Anger is a natural reaction.  But it takes something more, something otherworldly, to refuse to let that take hold, to push it aside in favor of humility and obedience and maybe even forgiveness.  A work in progress, I'm nowhere near mastering any of that.  But I can do pretty much anything with God's help, so I'm going to keep trying.

Take Me to the River...

Way back in the spring of my senior year of high school, I was baptised.  Growing up in the Southern Baptist church, there was no infant baptism.  Parents were encouraged to dedicate their children to God, which had the family standing in front of the church as the pastor prayed for them all, and specifically that the child being dedicated would grow to lead a life pleasing to God.  But there was no water involved, apart from the tears of emotionally overwhelmed grandparents.  I don't think my siblings and I were ever dedicated, but I saw many other kids in our church dedicated over the years.

As a child, I was a non-swimmer.  Even now, at thirty-four years old, I can only manage to swim a few feet before panic sets in and I need to touch bottom with my feet in order to calm down.  One really bad experience with the water left me afraid to ever submerge my face, which meant baptism was out of the question, no matter how much I felt I wanted to do it.  Discussions with my pastor about the possibility of performing a baptism that kept my face out of the water were fruitless.  Unless I went completely under, he said, it wasn't an actual baptism.  I still fail to see the logic in this (did he suspect the symbolic washing away of sin would leave my face vulnerable to bad, bad things?), but that's the way it was.  Finally, my senior year of high school I decided it was time to suck it up and get baptised.  I'd been doing daily bible study and was interested in truly living the type of life Jesus outlined in the New Testament, and in order to be obedient, this was the next step. 

My timing could have been a little better.  The baptism took place in March, after our sanctuary had burned down as a result of arson (still unsolved, by the way).  Because we didn't have access to a baptismal and this was before the days of portable hot tubs, we waited until the rain stopped for a few days and trooped to the banks of the Mad River.  Looking back, this was downright crazy. The water was freezing and the river was swift and high.  I'm not sure whose idea this was, but they probably weren't firing on all cylinders.  Anyway, my turn came and I waded out, breathless because of the coldness of the water.  I still remember the sensation of icy wetness over my face before being hauled back above the surface, gasping for air and plunking my way to shore to scattered applause.

I'd like to say I took things seriously enough to have a solid Christian experience from that point on, but as most young adults tend to do, I became self-involved and relied heavily upon my own logic to get through daily situations.  That particular issue has been a cyclical struggle ever since.  But I managed to get it together partway into my college years and do my best to be mindful of the way I'm supposed to be living and who I'm supposed to be relying on for even the little things (hint: not myself).  I figure if I counted on Him to get me through the two seconds underwater that felt like much, much more, I can certainly count on Him to get me through the harder stuff that doesn't terrify me half as much.

Food for Thought

Forgiveness has always been difficult for me.  It's easier to hold onto the negative feelings associated with the things people have done in the past than even consider forgiving them and moving on.  I think that tendency to hold on causes more damage in the long run, and I'm making an effort to move closer to forgiveness of the wrongs done by a few specific people long ago, though I will never forget them.

Bearing all that in mind, Mr. Donald Miller shares a poignant view of the topic at his blog.

He who sings scares away his woes. ~Cervantes

I love to sing.  To those who have known me longer than ten minutes, this comes as no great surprise.  Ever since I can remember, I've had one song or other going in the back of my mind at all times, and when content I tend to hum along with the music as I do chores and tasks throughout the day.  I do play a handful of instruments as well, but I consider voice my primary instrument and take the most pleasure in using it and using it often.

Since moving to Del Norte, the prospects of using my voice for anything more than group worship on Sunday mornings at church have been very dim.  This area of the state isn't exactly known for its booming music scene, and being the shrinking violet I was for a large chunk of time after we moved here, I was far too anxious about meeting new people to go out and seek out opportunities to sing with them.  So I sang with the radio and reminisced about my high school and university choral groups.  Not at all satisfying.

Then, wonder of wonders, a community choir began right here in Crescent City!  I eagerly joined and had a complete blast for a while, even garnering a solo on a song I wasn't all that familiar with.  But slowly, the glitz of the choir wore off and I was left feeling dissatisfied, wanting to be more than one voice in a group of nearly a hundred.  Something was lacking in the experience, so I started looking again. 

Our church worship leader had approached me about joining the team for a while, but the schedule never worked out for me.  A couple of weeks ago, I was able to move some things around and showed up for the first time ever to worship practice.  My voice was still recuperating from a nasty cold, so I did a little bit of keyboard and waited impatiently for the raspiness to go away.

This Sunday everything clicked.  Not only was I able to sing most of the notes (the cold is almost gone!), but it all felt right.  Everyone was in top form so the instrumentation was fantastic.  I got to do vocals with a dear friend who doesn't give herself near enough credit for her singing abilities, and I had a sense of peace and belonging about being up there that I've never had with any other group I've been part of.  Without a doubt, this is what I'm intended to be doing right now and I plan to enjoy every minute!