i’ve decided to dedicate thursdays to giving some of my personal life axioms…truth that, from my perspective, is self-evident. sometimes practical. sometimes philosophical. sometimes whimsical. but truth, no less.
“worry and anger are choices”
we love blaming others. “you made me do it”. “you really piss me off.” “you make me mad.” you’ve heard it before. you’ve said it before. we all have. the problem is that it’s not accurate.
no one can make us mad. no one can make us get angry. no one can make us worry. these are decisions we make. and the sooner we admit it, the sooner we can get healthy.
i’m not saying we shouldn’t get angry or there are not things that cause us to feel stress or worry or anxiety or frustration or fear or whatever. surely there are. but what i am saying is those are never the only choices we have. there are always…always…other possible responses.
instead of anger, we could respond with patience, understanding, forgiveness, tolerance, humor, justice, love, mercy, compassion, indifference, prayer…or a variety of other possibilities or combination of responses. anger is just usually the easiest, cheapest and quickest.
there are times that anger is justified. maybe even warranted and possibly necessary. i’m just saying it’s still a choice. we choose anger. we never have to get angry.
the same is true for worry. no matter what the situation, i still don’t have to worry. it is a choice. instead of worry, i could choose patience, trust, faith, hope, peace, joy, understanding, wonder, fear, perseverance…or combinations of any and all of them. worry is never the only option. like anger, it is usually the easiest, cheapest and quickest option when we are faced with uncertainty. we never have to worry.
there you have it.
one more thing. what would you say if i told you that, according to my understanding of scripture, worry is always sin and our anger is almost always sin??
I was just thinking... 
Kinda funny. Just yesterday we had an issue at the Bays compound. Seems that Kyle gave Logan a coat hanger when he was fighting with Connor. Which of course he turned around and whacked Connor with it. Well needless to say they all got in trouble for it. Well a little later Kyle came up and asked me if Connor cares for him then why does he make him so angry? (who hasn’t asked that about their sibling)
I told him that people we care about and care for us disappoint us all the time. They do bad things or things that upset us. But the way to respond to that isn’t through anger. There is ALWAYS a different way to deal with it and it will be a better way most of the time.
We are always better off trying to solve an issue than we are reacting to it. Too bad it isn’t always that easy.