Sometimes I blow off like a pressure cooker. And everyone must get out of the way. Then I don’t feel good about myself. I must be an example, but it’s as if something inside me trips and then it’s chaos.

I suspect that most of us get angry at times, some to a greater extent than others. Often it has something to do with who we are and how we’re put together that sets things off.

Charlize (not her real name) gives us a look at her life:

Sometimes the pressure of life also causes you to unconsciously act unlovingly.

I fight with my family every day about things lying around and that they don’t help me enough around the house.

Then I often hear: “She just wants to fight again!”.

I just want things organized. I get anxious when everything gets so messed up. With a disabled son it is extra difficult, because he likes to mess things around.

But then I stop and look at the unconditional love I also get from them. Then I feel ashamed and I wonder how they will remember me when I’m no longer here one day.

I need to make a change in my life. I don’t want them to be relieved when I die …

May I be an oasis for my family.

Many of us also have something of Charlize in us. We want things to work the way we want them to. If someone then gets in our way, all hell breaks loose and the other person takes a hit.

Why do we get so quickly into an argument or fight? Why do marriages look the way they do? Why are so many relationships hanging on by a thread? James asked the same questions and then simply gives the answer:

¹Where do you think all these appalling wars and quarrels come from? Do you think they just happen? Think again. They come about because you want your own way, and fight for it deep inside yourselves.

It’s the own self. It’s Joan Armatrading’s Me, Myself, I. As soon as Charlize is confronted with disorder, it gets hot in that house and everyone must get out of the way.

If I don’t get what I want in my marriage, the other one gets it and that’s what we see happening in many relationships.

Children of God, that’s us now, must learn to let the own self stand at the back of the queue and put the needs of others first. Then others will mourn when we are no longer there one day …

Scripture
James 4:1-6

Reflection
Do you also sometimes blow off steam too hard?
Where does the own self stand in the way?
How can you put others’ needs first?

Prayer
Jesus, You were the least and put the rest of the world first. I also want to push my own self aside, but on my own I struggle. In Jesus’ Name. Amen.