“Whoever is slow to anger is better than the mighty, and he who rules his spirit than he who takes a city.” Proverbs 16:32 I grew up in an environment of quick and furious anger. It was all I knew. It was so pervasive in my life that I assumed everyone in my life was dangerously angry, and could blow up on me at any second (whether deserved or not). This had a huge impact on my childhood. I grew up in terror. I had a hard time making friends. I literally trembled just trying to say hi to someone at school. I lived in the assumption that eventually everyone would be angry with me if they really knew me. Honestly…I was angry with myself. I was angry because I was overweight. I was angry when I struggled with math. I was angry at all my imperfections, and felt the weight of them keenly. I had some incredibly kind teachers. Small kindnesses shown to me then will never be forgotten. On one brutally cold winter day, I remember my fingers turning blue, and my teacher giving me hi...
I have been wondering why I am so interested in the increasing violence I am seeing in North America. I realise some of my friends may find it’s a strange thing to give my attention to…. But cyclical violence is very familiar to me. It has touched me and even deeply scarred my life. I have grown up witnessing the cycles of abuse. I am intimately acquainted with how that abuse has impacted my own heart. I was in danger of becoming abusive because I was abused. Would my abuser have abused me if they weren’t first abused themselves? I am a firsthand witness to abuse, and how this pattern of behaviour gets repeated from parent to child, parent to child, etc. The abuse I experienced inflamed my own rage, and it took years of work, repentance and self-control to unlearn that natural response of anger. I live with fear even to this day that it might yet take hold of me, and make a ruin of me and my daughter and her future children. Anger and violence in the home are not so di...