If you must be honest with yourself what scares you most? I think for many of us, myself included it is the idea of being honest with myself about my own inadequacies. Prior to being married to my wonderful wife I spent half a year in India on a mission trip, in sharing my testimony I would talk about how I grew up with an anger problem. In many ways I felt the weight of injustice on my shoulders and would lash out with red faced violence upon the slightest sense of an injustice, especially an injustice towards myself. The amazing thing in telling the story is that people would say they did not believe me. My life had changed so much since I had returned to walking with the Lord that it seemed my anger issues had completely dissolved. Marriage and family as good as it may be, has a way of exposing the most selfish pieces of our lives, and unrighteous anger is most definitely selfish. There is a such thing as rightly placed anger and I am sure that will arise in this journey but for now I want to focus on the unhealthy type of anger. I don’t know if this is the right place to start in a journey to find joy but I think anger is pretty much the opposite of joy so learning to both deal with it and grow out of it seems to be the right place.
Surfing today then meet with a home fellowship group, golf tomorrow, poker on Friday night, sleep-in Saturday, go to church when I want on Sunday and spending hours at the gym after work. That was a typical week in my life leading up to meeting my wife. I could do what I wanted, when I wanted and did not have anyone but myself to consider when making decisions.
As many married men do, I look back and often think, that was the life! Then I think, maybe I will go play some poker tonight, mention it to my wife and find myself watching the kids while she goes to Bible Study! Oh well maybe tomorrow, wait the kid has dance, the wife has a hair appointment and I cannot miss my meeting. It’s okay though Saturday is coming, I can go golfing! It’s all planned, tee time is set, bag is in the car waiting to go and 3:00 AM a kid starts throwing up, I start to get up when my wife says she’s got it and I roll over and go to sleep. 7:00 AM, I wake up, get my golf shirt on, walk downstairs to grab a cup of coffee see my wife awake with the sick kid in her lap asleep. She tells me to have fun playing golf and she’ll see me this afternoon. But I can’t leave now, I see her like that and know she needs sleep so I tell her to go upstairs and get some rest, after all I can play next week, or month or year ahhhhh!!!
Still, I try and be loving and caring and understanding of the situation. I let her sleep, make breakfast, clean up the kitchen throw the game on TV. No sooner does the game start, my kid wakes up, my sick kid who can’t play, who needs attention wakes up and asks for a cartoon. Ok, I can watch the latest Disney movie for the 7000th time this week, it will not make me any dumber, and I definitely will not start humming the song from the movie in a meeting at work… again! My wife comes down in the early afternoon and we just sit in silence, looking EXACTLY LIKE THE DAY WE GOT MARRIED! You know, with no makeup, stained shirt and sweatpants, you know the same one she wears every day, and is that, yup, some puke in her hair!!! oh so sexy. After a bit we order a ‘healthy’ pizza sure to help shrink my belly and I go upstairs to get some quiet time on the PlayStation. 5 minutes later I hear a yell from downstairs.
“Love, can you take the trash out!”
All the dwelling on the past, on the way things were bubbles up, hits the surface and I forget all the good of life now and all the bad of life then.
“ARE YOU KIDDING ME RIGHT NOW, I JUST SAT DOWN! YOUR UNBELIEVEABLE, GOD I WISH I WAS SINGLE.”
And in an instant your kids see tears, hear crying, and have another wonderful memory of mom and dad. And that is the journey and manifestation of anger. It happens to many of us in similar ways that I am sure are relatable. We remember so little of the good and focus on so much of the bad by some naturally narcissistic desire to be a victim of the very circumstances we create in our life.
What I forget to remember is that while I was playing golf, surfing, playing poker and running around to different church events a big chunk of my life was spent lonely. Not in a I need some time alone way, but in a way that lacked meaningful relationship, and even though I had friends and grew up with a great loving family. I lacked true relational intimacy, the kind where the soul can be laid open and bare without fear of judgment. The kind of intimacy where the shy sides of me melt away and I act like the goofball that I really am and that I am always afraid to let out in any way among even my friends let alone in public. I would lay awake many nights trying not to think about how I was going to wake up in the morning, go to work and repeat the same routine then go to the gym, grab a quick bite to go home and watch a show or play a video game then do it all over again.
I do not want to be that guy, I do not want to be that husband, and I don’t want to be that dad. And I think that is my first step towards finding joy. I need to take the head knowledge that when I get angry for reasons that are not right it is most often me being selfish. I need to somehow transfer that selfishness’s into opportunities for selflessness. In the posts that will follow I am going to attempt to learn selflessness in order to shed off selfishness and in the process, I hope to discover joy.
FamilyIdeas 