Anger is my achilles heel, my greatest weakness. Yeah, I don't hold grudges with people after I'm angry with them, but my anger burns bright and hot while I'm in the midst of a fiery passion.
How do I live with that? I get so angry that I yell and say hurtful things that I regret later. It takes a pretty good amount to fan my anger up into top-notch heat, but once it's there, It's hard to get rid of until I've done something completely stupid.
It wasn't until this week that I really learned how much of a weakness this is for me. It's like a cobra, hiding under my skin and striking when I least expect it, and the strike is so fast that I don't really realize what happened.
Why did the revelation come? I did something horrible out of anger this week, something I didn't think I could do, and it scared me. I scared myself, the night after I did the thing. I apologized, and I meant it; but the potential that I could do something that bad? Yeah, it was there.
When I went to confession this past Saturday, I was shaking in my boots with fear. I've heard that it takes courage to confess your sins, but I hadn't felt the need for that courage until recently. I felt ashamed of myself; ashamed to tell our parish priest of how horrible I had been.
Know what's strange, though? Men are not ashamed at all to sin and do the WRONG thing, but when they are faced with doing the right thing that is looked on as honorable, they are stricken with complete shame and embarrassment. I read that in a book, and it makes sense. Figure that one out, it's so strange and backwards.
It was this quote from the book I read that kept me going, strangely enough, and I made it into confession and confessed my sins. The best thing was, God came through. You know, He promises to do that, and I say I believe Him, but most of the time I'm trusting blindly and hoping that it'll remain true this time-- not really knowing. Each time He does come through, it makes me glad that I took the step of faith and trusted.
I feel so much more clean now. I do understand why Protestants think it'd be weird to confess your sins to someone else, but mostly I think that's because of shame. In going to confession, I'm not letting that hold me down. In 1 Peter, Peter told the early Christians to confess their sins to one another. I'm doing that, and you know what? I learned this week that it can be REALLY scary. Then and again, I learned that It's so GOOD as well.
Cause I didn't tell you that it lifted a huge burden off my soul to know that right there, right then, God forgave me. He wiped my soul clean and incinerated the cloth He wiped it with.
As for my anger, I'm not exactly sure what to do with it. I want to scream about it sometimes, I'm so frustrated; but I'm taking it to God in prayer. He'll know what to do. I'll try to calm down, to breathe, to love others like God would-- and your prayers would be wonderful as well.
Love you all!
-Tina
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