Anger

Have you ever been angry? Of course! All of us have been angry about something at some point in our lives. Why were you angry? What did you do with that anger? Do you think you were justified in your anger? Let's face it, all of us get angry. Even Jesus got angry:

Since the Passover of the Jews was near, Jesus went up to Jerusalem. He found in the temple area those who sold oxen, sheep, and doves, as well as the money-changers seated there. He made a whip out of cords and drove them all out of the temple area, with the sheep and oxen, and spilled the coins of the money-changers and overturned their tables, and to those who sold doves he said, "Take these out of here, and stop making my Father's house a marketplace."

So, is anger ever justified? Yes, in certain situations it is. Jesus was certainly justified in his anger over merchants setting up shop in the temple area. It is entirely appropriate to get angry over injustices that are done to us and others.

However, there is another kind of anger. This anger is the unreasonable desire for vengeance. We've all been hurt, annoyed, or in some other way upset by other people. We've all felt the need to get back at the person who hurt us. Anger builds up pressure within us. It clouds our perspective. It just keeps building and building until it finally explodes like a balloon. Anger has a tendency to get the best of us.

People who know me (at least, people outside my immediate family) would think that I don't struggle much with anger. I'm generally calm, quiet, and level-headed in my interactions with others. But I do struggle with anger. I see my anger manifesting itself in two different ways.


The first is through my lack of patience. My kids get the brunt of this anger most of the time. They're loud, they bicker with each other, they don't do what I tell them to do. They create messes in the house. I have a very short fuse for them acting like....well....acting like kids. So, I snap. I yell at them and punish them for being kids.  My anger here is certainly not justified and I need to learn greater patience.

The second manifestation of my anger is through people criticizing me, taking advantage of me, or hurting me in any way. I had a co-worker a number of years back at a different job who took advantage of me on a regular basis. She was manipulative, self-centered, and basically stole income from me many times. (The job was a commissioned based sales job, and we were supposed to be supporting each other in sales, not competing with each other.) Needless to say, this made me very angry. And on a few occasions I blew up at her, screaming and yelling at her in the middle of the office. Thankfully, I had enough resolve to not blow up at her in the presence of clients.

So, was my anger in either of these situations justified? In the first situation, with my kids, certainly not. My lack of patience is never justification for losing my temper with the kids. The second situation, however, is a bit more fuzzy. Stealing income from me could certainly be grounds for justified anger, but was it really justified, and if so, did I handle it appropriately? If it was justified, then I certainly did not handle it appropriately. I let my anger get the best of me. The situation could have been handled by better means.

To be honest, I don't think my anger at my co-worker was justified. Was she hurting me, or others, by doing what she did? Sure, she took a bit of income from me, but really, not enough to pose a threat to supporting my family. She was hurting herself far more than she was hurting me. She was damaging her relationship with me and the other office employees through her actions. To be honest, my anger was hurting myself more than she was hurting me. I let my anger control me and cloud my vision.

Does that mean that I should have continue to let her walk all over me? Certainly not. I could have handled the issues I had with her much more diplomatically. I could have spoken to her out of love and told her patiently that I did not want to be taken advantage of. If that didn't work, I could have documented what she did and how I tried to resolve it and then escalated it up the chain of command. Doing that would have been far more effective than screaming and yelling at her.

So, what's the antidote to anger? I already mentioned one--patience. We need to be patient with people and realize that they are not perfect. We expect people to be patient with us. We should do the same for others.

Forgiveness is the second antidote for anger. We need to be willing to forgive those that hurt us. one of the most difficult things to do is to face someone who hurt you and tell them that you forgive them. Yet it is the best way to release the pressure that the anger is building up inside of us.

Nikki and Babs DVD Giveaway!

Wow! I looked at my blog today and noticed it has been nearly a month since my last post. My life this past month has been super busy. I've started a new youth ministry year, had family and other work commitments and started writing a weekly article for Catholic Dads titled A Father's Faith. I just have not had time to spend on my own blog.

One thing that has taken up a bit of my time is that I have written a Bible Study Guide for the Nikki & Babs: Do's and Doubts DVD series put together by Sonlight Pictures. You may remember that I reviewed the DVD in a previous blog post. You can read all about it here. The Bible Study Guide is geared specifically for middle school youth but it can be adapted for high schoolers or even a family bible study. It is free and you can download a copy of the bible study from the Sonlight Pictures website.

 To launch this new Bible Study, I am giving away a free copy of the Nikki & Bab's DVD. All you have to do is e-mail me at timdburke74@verizon.net. I will choose a winner randomly from the entries I receive.

Want to increase your chances of winning? You can receive an additional entry if you tweet this post and/or write a post on your own blog and link to mine. Let me know in the comments if you do this with a link to the tweet or blog post.

The contest will close on October 15 and the winner will be announced here on this blog shortly thereafter.

Quote of the Day

God does not demand that I be successful.  God demands that I be faithful. ~Mother Theresa

I think that says it all.

Envy

Envy is an easy sin to fall into, isn't it? We look at what others have. We look at their successes, their possessions, their looks, their talents, their friends, and we ask ourselves, "Why don't I have that?" We look at what others have that we don't and we become envious. Thomas Aquinas said that "envy is sorrow at another person's good." Gore Vidal had this to say of envy: "When a friend of mine succeeds, something in me dies."

Envy is an easy trap to fall into. I've fallen into it many times. I've never been successful in the eyes of the world. I don't have a big, fancy house. I don't drive a big, fancy car. I don't have a big bank account or a career that the world would say is powerful, influential, or important. In fact, when I took a job in youth ministry, I had an acquaintance that reacted with: "Oh....well....At least its a job, right?" Clearly the world does not see a job in youth ministry as being successful.

A number of years ago, this lack of worldly success bothered me a lot. I was envious of friends and acquaintances who held high and lofty positions and made lots of money. I was envious of the cars they drove and the houses they lived in. I was envious of the fact that they could spend money on anything they wanted and not be afraid of not having enough money to pay the bills or buy groceries. I wanted to be like them, to have their successes. At the time I was working as a manager at Office Depot....well, not even a manager, just an assistant manager. I talked to my wife about leaving my career in retail and doing something else, something that would give me financial success, something that would give me status.

So, I left Office Depot. I entered into a whole new world to me, a world that I thought would give me status, success, and everything I wanted from the world. I spent several months going through a rigorous training program and upon passing my licensing exams, I officially became a financial advisor with a top advisory firm. I held 4 different licenses that allowed me to trade stocks, bonds, mutual funds, and to sell insurance products. I had the tools necessary to advise millionaires on what to do with their money. I was about to become incredibly successful.

I remember that first summer working in my new job. I had not quite finished my training, but had gone through enough of the process to be allowed to attend a Summer Regional Conference at a luxurious resort at Universal Studios in Orlando. I was on cloud nine! I could rub elbows with the rich and successful advisors of the firm. The last evening of the conference was the highlight of the whole weekend for me and my wife. It was the awards banquet. Advisors were given rewards for many different things that night, but the ones that fascinated me the most were the ones that rewarded the most successful advisors. As the million dollar producers (and greater!) got up to receive their rewards I could think of nothing but "I've done it! I'm here. I'm on the verge of tremendous success. That is going to be me receiving that reward in a couple of years!"

The first six months in the field were great! I still wasn't making a lot of money...in fact I was making less money than I did at Office Depot, but I knew that with time and a lot of work I could eventually make substantially more. I was no longer envious of the success of others. I was, in my eyes, successful in the eyes of the world. I also carried about me an unhealthy sense of pride at my status.

Unfortunately, it didn't last. The financial services industry, particularly financial advising, is a very difficult industry to be successful in. You have to be a very good salesman, capable of convincing people of doing business with you. You have to be persistent, and incredibly aggressive. I am none of those things. I had all the knowledge to help my clients and potential clients. I knew how to protect their assets. I knew how to make them money. I just couldn't convince them to do business with me. And after two and a half years of missed sale after missed sale, I was let go for not making my sales goals.

My envy got the best of me. I wanted so much to be like other people that I forgot who I truly was. I'm not a salesman. I knew that going into the job. But I had convinced myself that I could do it. I ended up losing my job and being unemployed for 7 months. My envy ended up hurting me. It ended up hurting my family.

God has given us unique gifts and talents. Not everyone is created equal. God made the world radically unequal because we all have different missions. I'm learning to discover mine, instead of trying to pursue the same mission that God has for others.

So now I'm working in youth ministry. For many people that is a step backwards from even working as an assistant manager at Office Depot. It certainly was for that acquaintance who had such a negative reaction to learning about my new job, who, by the way, was a colleague at that financial advisory firm. I've come to learn that this is my mission. This is what God wants me to do, where He wants me to be. I've learned to let go of envy in my life...at least in this area of my life. And you know what? I'm a lot happier now than when I was pursuing my envious desires. I thought that pursing worldly fame and success would bring me happiness. All it brought was pain and suffering. My life is more peaceful, more relaxed, more enjoyable. Do I still wish I had more? Do I still stress about finances and money? Sure. But in those moments I try to remember that God is in control. He has a plan for me and I need to surrender to it.

So, how do you overcome envy? What's the antidote? Admiration. Gratitude. Kindness.

Be grateful for the gifts God has given you. Be grateful for the gifts He has given to others. Stop comparing yourself to others. You have your own gifts and talents. Realize that you have your own mission, and it is not the same as the mission God has given to others. Pursue that mission, and be content with what you have. No. Not content. Be joyful with the gifts you have.

Throwing Staplers at Jesus

I love to read. I always have. I can remember very clearly, as a teenager, reading This Present Darkness and Piercing the Darkness by Frank Peretti, and the chills it gave me as he wrote about spiritual warfare. However, unlike my wife and daughter, I've never been one to re-read books. Kari and my oldest daughter have been known to re-read their favorite books a half dozen times, or more. There are quite a few books that I have enjoyed reading over the years, but I've never re-read any of them. So, when I told my wife that I was going to re-read The Seven Storey Mountain by Thomas Merton, she was quite surprised. It's been a number of years since I've read it, but I remember it having a profound impact on my life. I'm at a point in my life where I need something that will have a profound impact on it and my spirituality, so I return to the book that launched a new chapter in my life several years ago.

I'm not that far into it, still in the first chapter actually, but it is already having an impact. Thomas tells us of a story about him and his younger brother, John Paul. John Paul was a number of years younger than Thomas, and always wanted to be included in the things that Thomas and his friends did, yet Thomas wouldn't let him. Thomas tells a story of a time where he and a friend were building a hunt in a field near their home. John Paul wanted to be included, but Thomas and his friend wouldn't let him. They yelled at him to go away and even threw rocks at him. Yet he wouldn't leave. He just stood there about a hundred yards away from Thomas, "not sobbing, not crying, but angry and unhappy and offended and tremendously sad." John Paul loved his brother and wanted to be near him and included in his life, yet Thomas rejected him and his love.

 What struck me about this was not the story itself. I remember being the one rejected by my siblings, so this was not new and groundbreaking news to me. What struck me is what Merton wrote next:

In a sense, this terrible situation is the pattern and prototype of all sin; the deliberate and formal will to reject disinterested love for us for the purely arbitrary reason that we simply do not want it. We will to separate ourselves from that love. We reject it entirely and absolutely, and will not acknowledge it, simply because it does not please us to be loved.

As any good Ignatian would do, I put myself in the scene before me and reflected on it. The scene that presented itself to me was one of me going about my daily activities. I imagined myself at work, working on my laptop; at home, playing with my kids, talking to my wife. All the while, Jesus is standing there about a hundred yards away. I'm completely ignoring Him. From time to time He tries to come closer, but I yell at Him. I tell Him to go away. I throw staplers at Him. I throw my kids toys at Him. So He stands there, a hundred yards away, looking sad; and yet there is also a look of love on His face. He wants to come closer. He wants to embrace me with His love. He asks for nothing in return for His love. But I reject it completely and totally. I won't let Him in.

Why do we keep Jesus at a distance in our lives? Why do we force Him and His love away from us? Maybe it's because the love of Jesus, as Merton states, "reminds us that we all need love from others, and depend on the charity of others to carry on our own lives. And we refuse love, and reject society, in so far as it seems, in our own perverse imagination, to imply some obscure kind of humiliation." Perhaps we reject the love of Jesus out of a sense of pride. We want to live our lives on our own, without any help. We don't want to be seen as being dependent on others out a fear of humiliation.

In reality, we do need the love of God. It is His love that brought us into this world. It is His love that keeps us in this world. And, when the time comes, it is His love that will bring us out of this world. The love of God has given us all of our talents, all of our treasure. We need to put down our staplers. We need to stop yelling. We need to allow Jesus to come closer to us and embrace us in His love.

Mission to South America

A couple of teens who were a part of my youth ministry program, and have since graduated, have gone to Peru to work with poor and sick children. They have started a blog to chronicle their mission, Our Mission to South America. Please pray for them and those that they will serve.

why? Why? WHY?

Why does God have to keep hitting me over the head? At the beginning of the week I had a conversation with my wife about my need to be more disciplined. I told her I need to have more focus--in my work, in my prayer life, in my relationship with her and my children. Several events occurred this week that reminded me of the need for more discipline in my life. And then today, I pick up the Church bulletin for this coming weekend. (One of the perks of working for the Church is getting an "advance copy" of the parish bulletin.) Each week the pastor writes a letter to the parishioners. This week he wrote this:

In the letter to the Hebrews we read: "At the time, all discipline seems a cause not for joy but for pain, yet later, it brings the peaceful fruit of righteousness to those who are trained by it." We are all tempted to seek the easiest way in everything and to want to make things easier for those we love. But it is important to discern what is the best for them because discipline in the right measure helps us more than indulgence.

More on discipline. Regular readers of my blog know that I have written on discipline before. I have written about it here, here, and here, to name a few. So, why does God keep hitting me over the head with discipline? Well....I think it's because I'm not listening. I keep falling into the same trap over and over again. The Devil really knows how to get me. He just distracts me and gets me to waste time on insignificant things instead of focusing my time and energy on the work of the Lord.

The problem with discipline is that it requires so much....well, discipline. And, as we read in the letter to the Hebrews, "all discipline seems a cause not for joy, but for pain." Discipline is hard, and initially there seems to be no fruit from a life of discipline. A life of laziness and indulgence provides an instant satisfaction. It requires no effort, no work. But it ends in a life of misery. I know. That's why my wife and I were talking about discipline at the beginning of the week. She was asking me why I was so miserable, why I have lost my passion. After really looking at it and my life, I discovered that it was because I had lost my discipline. Discipline may not bring an instant joy, but one who is disciplined will, with time, enjoy "the peaceful fruit of righteousness."