Tuesday’s Trench Lesson

Coffee Hour @ Chicklit Power...

Welcome to our Tuesday’s Trench Lesson & Coffee Hour @ Chicklit Power! I can’t wait to share this lesson with you today, especially in light of what’s happened in the Inland Empire of California! Grab your coffee, your SOF (strand of faith) and let’s go talk about the differences between rage…and anger!

What is it that we think of when we think of acts of rage? It could be something as “subtle” as the subliminal messages of rage we hear when we turn the radio on and listen to what is being called “music.” All we have to do is turn on the TV or our cell phones, and soon, our screens fill or minds and hearts with stories of rage: road rage, domestic violence, rage on the fields and courts with athletes, devious acts of rage…and terrorists’ rage! In fact, haven’t we recently experienced such rage in our community?

What a perfect time to share a bit of our Root of Rage within our Transform, the Series program!

The statistics for child, spousal abuse and domestic violence are staggering and they all have the thread of rage as a common denominator. A simple explanation of rage is Roaring Anger Going Everywhere! Imagine you have an emotional pot within you wherein every wrong thing ever done to you has been put – may be even forgotten and not forgiven, but every wrong things is simmering, burning from the inside out until one more thing happens and then…the EXPLOSION!

Let’s take just a few minutes to talk about a few tell-tale signs of rage that often go undetected, although they may not be so easy to detect in a terrorist-type situation – that’s a whole other subject and mindset – the symptoms often go unnoticed, not dealt with until it’s almost too late. I say almost because God has righted so many of our rage-filled wrongs and only HE is able! We must ask some hard questions that require some honest answers!

Do you feel persistently angry with other family members and/or yourself? If you are paying attention to your emotional dashboard you may be able to answer that one right away…honestly. Here are a couple ways to help you determine if you have this symptom: you don’t participate in/with family gatherings; instead, you kind of feel like you are on the outside looking in. Or, when you see someone do something wrong and it goes uncorrected, it baffles you because you know how you would handle it! Or how about this one: the smallest thing makes you want to scream? And I’m not talking about a hormonal scream every now and then where you get on that broom and ride, but a consistent pattern of small things taking up big space and causing big reactions!

There are many other tell-tale signs and you may think that this blog does not pertain to you – and maybe it doesn’t pertain to you, but someone you know, so let me give you some differences between anger and rage.

1. Anger is temporary, usually situational whereas rage is ongoing and growing!
2. Anger is about the present moment, the current action; rage is a collision of that moment with many distant/past accumulated memories simmering in that emotional pot.
3. Anger can be resolved by communication and/or compromise; rage takes a deeper work for it is a mixture of many ingredients: fear, desperation, anger, panic, and many more, which is what makes it so volatile!
4. Anger can be healthy; rage is never healthy.

There is such a thing as righteous anger! We hear over and over how many of us were taught never to be angry, but I daresay that is a contradiction to scripture. See, God created us as emotional beings with the ability to experience every single emotion…which HE experienced, including anger. What we need to remember is being angry is not the sin; it’s what we do with that anger that either tears down or builds up!

Until next week…

Evinda