“Anger doesn’t solve anything. It builds nothing, but it can destroy everything.”
Through my recent trial, I have been feeling a lot of anger at times. What's interesting with this is that I am not a very angry person. However, through the three year friendship that has come to an end, I have had bouts of severe anger. Looking back, I think it comes back to the principle where when one leaves God out, you, friendships, relationships, and everything starts to deteriorate. Anything left stagnate will deteriorate. That was the same with me. When I left God out, my spirit deteriorated, and I was quick to anger. This also happened at the time when my husband left. Apparently, I am really good at finding injustices whether real or perceived and letting anger work it's destructive magic.
President Monson gave a beautiful talk back in 2009 on the subject of anger. It has so many nuggets of wisdom that I am linking the entire article here.
In President Monson's talk, he speaks of a few different cases of injustices, hurts, wrongs, and what anger did in each of the cases. I looked at my own situations and saw ugliness. I saw that what happened between my friend and I was not the result of what she did to me but my reaction of anger towards her. On a few occasions, we tried to work things out, but I could not get over my anger towards her because of the perceived injustices. Now I'm left with this thought mentioned in the talk...
Apropos are the words of the poet John Greenleaf Whittier: “Of all sad words of tongue or pen, the saddest are these: ‘It might have been!’
What might have been had I forgiven her and loved her more from day one. What might be if I can drop the anger now and forgive and love her more? What might have been or be if she dropped the anger and could forgive me?
As I am typing this, it occurred to me that anger is the last five letters of the word danger. I'm sure that has been pointed out somewhere before and that I am not just that brilliant, but interesting because it's as though the word warns you of it's outcomes unintentionally.
As I looked at the perceived injustices with my friend and I, I let anger in, let anger destroy the friendship. I couldn't reconcile the feelings I had. Now I have a choice again...Since the ruination of the friendship, I have heard some of the things she has been saying to her family about me. It brings up a lot of injustices and I am struggling with anger again. I won't fall victim of my anger this time though, I will forgive, love more, and choose as the talk suggests to not take offense where none is intended. I will choose to think that despite our situation, she loves me as much as I love her, and thinks highly of me still.
It comes back to that the Lord is disappointed more with how I reacted to her out of anger more than the actual hurt that was inflicted by both of us to each other. The damage was greater by what we let become of us than the original hurt.
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