Anger.  Sometimes it's justified.  But many times it's just a time bomb that explodes without much warning, inflicting pain on anyone in its path.  Has it visited your home?  Lately, it seems to be showing up more and more in our home.  So when Monday's devotions with the kids dealt with anger, it was a timely and useful lesson.

We have one child that seems to get angry so much more easily than any of the others.  I think it's infectious though.  Once this child, our youngest, explodes everyone else catches it and our day goes downhill, at least for awhile.  So when Monday's devotion was about anger, we made that our focus.  

Our devotion talked about not letting ourselves become easily angered.  So the first day, when our youngest got angry, over a very minor thing, it was time to put the lesson into practice.  But what do you do?  I did the first thing I could think of - gently remind him what our lesson was that day and ask him to calm down.  That seemed to work pretty well.  As we got further into the week I realized that I sometimes got angry too quickly with him as well, which never helped the situation.  In fact, it usually made it worse.  I  needed to remind myself not to let anger get hold of me.  After all, the Bible says "a gentle answer turns away wrath." (Prov. 15:1) And that is so true.  Isn't it funny how we often learn our own lessons when we're in the midst of training our children?

Asking him, or any of the children, to calm down when he got angry was a start, and controlling my own anger helped a lot too.  But what about the heart of the issue.  Why was he getting angry in the first place?  I asked myself that question many times.  First, he's five, and the youngest, and often has to raise his voice to be heard above all the other voices.  Also, there are times when, I think, we expect too much from him and then he gets frustrated and really isn't sure how to express that except through anger.  As a result I've tried to be more understanding, listen attentively when he speaks, offer more help, and give a little more grace. 

I was further convicted that this was something we needed to work on when I came across a discussion on a message board about teaching our children how to overcome their anger.  Praying Scripture over your children was suggested, and I realized that I haven't put this to prayer like I should have.  Why oh why do I need reminders to do that?  So this is my next step -  praying Phil 4:5 over my youngest guy, and really for all of us.  "Let your gentleness be evident to all." 

We'll see how this week goes.  I know this is something we need to work on.  God made that pretty clear to me - all the way from a child's devotional to a discussion in an online message board.  I love it when He gets His message across to me in so many different ways.  Now, I just need to keep my eyes open for the rest of the story here.