Keeping Your Cool…When Your Anger Is Hot!: Practical Steps to Temper Fiery Emotions (30 page)

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Authors: June Hunt

BOOK: Keeping Your Cool…When Your Anger Is Hot!: Practical Steps to Temper Fiery Emotions
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How the A-List Spells Relief
The next time you find yourself feeling the heat, take a moment to work through the list of anger alleviators. Doing so can save you from acting in ways you might regret later and spare yourself and others around you much heartache. The A-list serves as a guide to navigate you through fiery scenarios with emotional and spiritual maturity. The more you utilize it, the more you’ll be able to extinguish the most powerful blaze.
Rapid Intervention Crew: Ready for Action
Trained firefighters know it is foolish—and dangerous—to send an entire team into a burning building at the same time. That’s why it is standard protocol to have a Rapid Intervention Crew (RIC) ready for action. This is a standby team prepared to quickly move in to rescue or to help should any firefighting comrades face peril.
Most crews follow a procedure called “Two In/Two Out,” which is a safety measure whereby two firefighters enter a hazardous zone while at least two others stand by outside in case the first two need rescuing. Thus, a minimum of four firefighters must be on the scene before any can enter a burning building.

 

Talk to any experienced firefighter, and you’ll find there are dozens of safety procedures in place and practiced long before they encounter a real emergency. Once called into action, all personnel know precisely how to proceed. They have spent many hours preparing mentally and physically for nearly every possible scenario.

 

When it comes to anger, we too should prepare with the same diligence. We know our emotions are going to threaten to rage out of control sooner or later, and we can have safety measures in place to address the blaze the moment it erupts. Learn to fight volatile anger like a Rapid Intervention Crew—use precaution and the safest preventative measures!
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CREATIVE COMBUSTION
How to Fight for Right with Justifiable Anger
“In your anger do not sin:
Do not let the sun go down while you are still angry”
(EPHESIANS 4:26).

 

CONSIDER: WHAT IS THE DIFFERENCE between a rocket capable of carrying astronauts to the moon and a lethal bomb that can lay waste to whole cities? Both are loaded with dangerous and volatile fuel. Both explode with violent force. Both can serve humanity, and both can be used to commit crimes against humanity. What sets them apart?
Conclusion:
The intentions of the people who use them determines the difference.
Contemplate: Two men are standing before you, guns in hand. Their weapons contain an explosive mixture of sulfur, charcoal, and potassium nitrate, a trio of chemical agents that burn rapidly and emit hot solids and gases that act as a propellant. Gunpowder, it would seem, in the possession of these two men, serves two very distinct purposes.
Cross purposes: One man with a menacing demeanor waves his gun threateningly, intent on harming anyone who doesn’t comply with his demands for money, drugs, sexual submission. The other man is steadily composed and clothed in a police uniform, intent on defending anyone who could be violated or victimized. One uses gunpowder constructively, the other, destructively.
Anger is a lot like gunpowder, rockets, and bombs: It can be evil and dangerous, but not always. Not everything that is ignited is destructive and deplorable. Sometimes a spark and a flame are exactly what we need to address critical issues or get important work done.
It’s true that intense heat can hurt people, but under the right conditions, it can also become the catalyst for constructive transformation. I’m sure you would agree pancake batter isn’t particularly appetizing until it’s been on a sizzling-hot griddle. And what good is a 5,000-pound car without an internal combustion engine to release the explosive potential of gasoline and propel it down the road? The same is also true of fiery anger: It can reduce a relationship to ashes, or spark a flame for positive change.
Contrary to what we may have been taught, anger is not always an emotional dead end, with no way out and no hope for change. It is more like a fork in the road. The destination you reach is up to you. Turn one direction—the way most commonly taken—and you enter a demolition derby of revenge and retribution. That road leads only to more pain, broken relationships, unforgiveness, and words and actions you will come to regret.
Channeling Anger into Positive Change
But like every fork in the road, there is an alternate path. To choose it, you must change your deeply ingrained thinking about anger. The philosophy you learn from the world fits neatly on a bumper sticker: Don’t get mad, get even!
On the road less traveled, you will learn a new way: to neither run from your anger nor give in to it, but to face it and direct its explosive power toward a beneficial purpose—the purpose God intends.
Every step you take in that direction harmonizes your life with the will of God. As Paul wrote, “Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect.”
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And what begins as a personal commitment to transform your thinking and harness your anger might end up being used by God to bless countless lives. That’s His specialty, you know—taking one person’s commitment to transformation and causing it to spread like wildfire throughout a family, a community, a city, a country…and sometimes even the world.
The Scenario that Ignited Anger
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As a young man, César Chávez had more reason than most people to be angry. He already knew a lot about racial prejudice, social and economic injustice, and the personal pain they can cause. What he knew wasn’t learned from books in history class at school; he lived it and experienced it every day.
César was born in 1927 on his family’s small farm near Yuma, Arizona. In addition to working the land, his father, Librado, ran a local grocery store that did enough business for the family to get by. Poor by modern standards, they didn’t think of themselves that way.
César’s mother, Juana, a devout Christian, was known for sharing what little they had with vagrants and others down on their luck. From her, César learned the importance of giving, and he developed an ironclad commitment to Christlike nonviolence that would define him later in life.
But the boy’s world was far from perfect. He had been born into a society that considered people with his skin color and heritage to be inferior. Many in the community thought nothing of creating rules that made it more difficult for people like the Chávez family to prosper, even in the best of times. But the 1930s were not the best of times for anyone in America.
Through the early years of the Great Depression, Librado and Juana managed to stay on their land and feed their children. The kids spent half the day in school and the remaining hours working, either in the family store or in the fields.
However, by 1938, the economic stress became too much to handle, and the Chávez family could no longer afford to pay property taxes on the farm. They were eligible for an emergency loan from the federal government for people in their circumstance, but the application was blocked numerous times by an unscrupulous local banker who wanted to buy the land himself for pennies on the dollar.
When the Chávez homestead was auctioned later that year, the only bidder was the bullying banker. César and his brother watched as he took possession of their home and tore down many of the structures their father had built.
César later recalled, “We were pushed off the land…When we left the farm our whole life was upset, turned upside down. We had been part of a very stable community, and we were about to become migrant workers. We had been uprooted.”
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This was just one more event in a long history of unfair treatment at the hands of prejudiced neighbors and community leaders. And it burned in César’s heart like a brush fire, spreading flames of indignation. For years, he and his family moved from place to place in California, picking crops in a harsh new life of never-ending, back-breaking labor.
Firsthand, César witnessed the deplorable conditions and unfair—often brutal—treatment the workers endured. He quit school after eighth grade. In 1944, he lied about his age and joined the navy at 17, serving two years.
Yet even wearing a serviceman’s uniform was not enough to break down the cultural barriers of segregation and discrimination when he returned home. He remembers a typical incident in a local diner:
There was a sign on the door that said “white trade only” but we went in anyway. We heard they had these big hamburgers and we wanted one. There was a blonde, blue-eyed girl behind the counter. She said, “We don’t serve Mexicans,” and she laughed when she said it. She enjoyed doing that, laughing at us. We went out but I was real mad. Enraged. It had to do with my manhood.
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Who can blame him? Wouldn’t you be angry if you’d been treated so disrespectfully? Especially after years of watching the people you cared for being cheated, oppressed, exploited, and exposed to dangerous and degrading working conditions? It is the kind of anger that has sparked ruinous riots and even bloody revolutions.
The Pitchfork for Positive Change
Soon César had a family of his own and was working the fields of California beside his father and mother to put food on the table. His anger smoldered deep within his heart. He had arrived at a crossroad. Would he go down the path of hostility and destruction, or would he channel his anger and let it work for good?
With God’s help, you truly can rule anger instead of letting anger rule you.
To the benefit of millions of people, César chose the latter. True to his Christian upbringing, he refused to create more hatred in the world. Until his death in 1993, César Chávez devoted himself to bringing dignity and prosperity to poor, powerless farm workers all over America.
César’s tireless and courageous work as founder of the United Farm Workers eventually won for farm laborers wage increases, health benefits, improved working conditions, and the right to bring grievances to their employers. As César’s biographer pointed out:
He taught [the people] to demand not just a better life, but an altogether different society. Taking literally Jesus’ words in the Sermon on the Mount that “the last shall be first,” Chávez gathered the farm workers and made them a peaceful force for social change.
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César Chávez could have become just another violent, angry young man. He could have started a gang instead of a social movement. But he didn’t. The deciding factor lay in his determination to use his anger, and not to be ruled by it.
Ways to Harness Your Heat
That same choice presents itself every time any of us gets angry. The issues at stake needn’t be world-changing for your anger to become a positive force in your life. Sometimes the benefit can be as simple as an infusion of courage as you stand up to someone who mistreats you—a boss who unfairly takes credit for your work, a teenager who repeatedly shows disrespect for you and your rules, or a neighbor who spreads nasty rumors about your friend.
In any situation, no matter how seemingly small and mundane or massive and monumental, you are the one who decides what to do with your anger. Inward transformation resulting in outward change is always possible. With God’s help, you truly can rule anger instead of letting anger rule you.
The challenge is making the right choice when your anger is at its hottest. It takes both discipline and determination to refrain from lashing out and, instead, redirecting your “creative combustion” down positive pathways. Here are four strategies to help you do just that:

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