Phew. Sometimes we just get stuck on mad, don’t we? I wouldn’t be hammering on these things ordinarily, but it seems that my lovely plan to blog daily happened to intersect with my having to deal with a bad attitude on my part. I’ve been taking critiques too personally and getting too upset when people don’t share my world view to function very well. I’ll cut it out and get over it, but before I do, here are five things that ruin a good mad mood.
1. Stoopid K-Love radio. Listen, K-Love, maybe I want to be in a mad mood and you playing songs about God’s mercy, grace, and forgiveness isn’t what I want to hear. Even worse is when I am mad and one of your happy slappy deejays starts chirping about how funny it is that men leave their socks out and ladies take so long to get ready. I can’t change the dial fast enough.
2. Intentional blog writing. Seriously. How can you logically maintain a mad mood when you feel obligated to write a blog post which will certainly be read by tens of people!? Unless you are Ann Coulter, it’s pretty difficult.
3. Kids with honestly deep questions. It’s easy enough to brush off the shallow stuff and nurse a mad mood, but when a kid levies a deep question your way, you have no choice other than to set aside the mad mood and deal directly with the kid. I’m not new here, so when I see a pair of serious eyes with a crinkled forehead coming my way, I run or risk losing all the mad mood momentum I have built up.
4. When your spouse walks in the door looking worse than you do. This one makes me crazy. Here I am, all ready to dump my mad mood all over his head and he seems to already have had his fill. Now who do I vent to!?
5. This last one is the worst one and I avoid it all costs when I want to maintain a mad mood: Prayer and communication with God through His Word. Usually, the end result of me being mad begins when I feel unfairly stepped on. When I pray and seek God through His Word, I often find it revealed to me that I’m a stepper too, that I am not the center of the universe, and that being mad (or anxious, worried, critical) takes up too much space in my brain and leaves no room for God to work. I know this and that is why I try to avoid prayer when I want to feel justified in having my hackles raised and feathers ruffled. Unless I can manipulate the prayer to make me feel good about justifying my upset, I want nothing of it.
Sometimes being mad (anxious, worried, critical) feels good. Sure, you run people off and turn yourself unattractively bitter, but it feels good. Avoid the five things listed above and you too can get your angry swagger on. Now, if you will pardon me, I’m going to take the kids to the Y and try to get into a yelling match with the teenaged lifeguard about why the slide isn’t open.
Girl, I LOVE YOU! You ALWAYS his the nail on the head – in a joyful way. How can a post about wanting to stay angry be so joy filled?!?!? But, seriously, I seem to be dealing with this same issue head on (my verse for the year: James 1:19), so this was a must read for me! Again, LOVE YOU, and I mean it!
I love you too!! I am happy to know that my cyber confessions serve the community well.
Oh, they do serve your community well, Amy, they do.
I couldn’t help but laugh as I read because I can SO relate.
On the flip side…five things I’ve found escalate a good mad mood:
1. Any effort on my husband’s part to soothe or calm me. (Doesn’t matter how he approaches it…I wind up feeling patronized and even more pissed. ; )
2. A trip to the local WalMart to stand in line at the checkout for a minimum of three times as long as it took me to do the actual shopping. (In fact, this will, more often than not, elicit the good mad mood, if it’s not already in full swing.)
3. A call to customer support (pick your service-provider…doesn’t matter if it’s Comcast, Dish, DirectTV, the local electric company, or your bank). (As in #2…this activity is so frustratingly maddening that it will often elicit said good mad mood.)
4. A reminder (from anyone) that I am not walking my talk when I hold onto, and nurture, my anger. Yeah, yeah, whatever…dammit!
Or worse…when anyone offers up my own words, further demonstrating that I am not walking my talk.)
5. And last but certainly not least…any implication that my anger is not righteous.
Thank you, Amy, for sharing your good mad mood and somehow, magically, in the process, lightening mine.
HA! I love your list! Don’t tell me that barking is not consistent with my preaching or else I will key your car.
I hear ya on the KLove thing. As much as I love them, it’s always someone bubbling “I’m a mom and here is how I am the best mom.” As if getting to be a mom is the most ordinary thing in the world. Like saying so isn’t a dagger in the heart of so many women who don’t get to BE moms.
Then there’s the men who love their wives so much… As if there are men on earth who WANT to be married and actually appreciate godly women.
On the rare occasions they acknowledge that there are single people who might actually be Christian … ( because if you are a Christian and love God, of COURSE you are blessed with marriage!) it’s ever so brief and never with the acknowledgment that they make us feel like we must deserve being alone, all the rest of the time. Sometimes it’s hard to listen when it’s obvious they think single Christians are as rare as unicorns!
But the rest of the time I love them!!!
K-Love made the mistake of sending a survey to me on a postcard recently.
Surely there can be a station that plays good music and also has deejays who can be clean without sounding dumb and out of touch. On a good day, I find the deejays annoying.
Amy,
I love how you can make me feel good about my righteous indignation!
There are just some things we shouldn’t have to get over.
It is so hard, when we want it to all about me, and then lets us see that other desire it to be about them and they really have a need, we can’t ignore, we want to say but… what about me? Must be human…