Why do I have such a short fuse?
Why Do I Have Such a Short Fuse?
“Be ye angry, and sin not: let not the sun go down upon your wrath: Neither give place to the devil.”Ephesians 4:26-27 (KJV)
I feel like I was born with a short fuse. Sometimes it feels like I didn't get to decide that. As life went on, I noticed that things would just come out of my mouth before I even chose to say them. I did a lot of damage control because of this.
Most of us have been told our whole lives to just breathe and calm down. To be real with you, that has never worked one time for me.
I just thought I was too broken because of my trauma.
Then one day God showed me why, through Paul, the man who wrote most of the New Testament.
"Be ye angry, and sin not: let not the sun go down upon your wrath: Neither give place to the devil."
Ephesians 4:26-27 (KJV)
Read that first part:
"Be ye angry."
Ephesians 4:26 (KJV)
A man of God is telling us to be angry, which to me was crazy. He doesn't stop us there though.
He tells you not to sin inside of it, and he even gives it a duration. Don't let the sun go down on it.
Verse 27 gives you the reason, and this is the part I want you all to pay close attention to:
"Neither give place to the devil."
Ephesians 4:27 (KJV)
"Give place" means give him room, hand him ground to stand on.
I was able to recognize that being angry is okay in the moment. That's why they call it the heat of the moment.
Feel the heat, be frustrated, sure. Carrying it over is what turns a bad mood into giving the devil ground to stand on.
Some of us don't just carry our anger overnight. If we're being honest, we've been carrying it for years.
I know for sure that I've done that with my family, and with a lot of other things in my life.
What's amazing is that Jesus got angry.
"And when he had looked round about on them with anger, being grieved for the hardness of their hearts."
Mark 3:5 (KJV)
So no, anger by itself is not a sin, because if it was, that verse could not exist. The feeling was never the problem.
If you look closely, we can see what Jesus was angry about. He was grieving over their hardened hearts.
That means Jesus's anger was about them, and ours is almost always about us.
Somebody disrespected me. Somebody made me look stupid.
His anger was over what their hearts were doing, and ours is over what got done to us.
What I learned about a short fuse is that it's not truly the anger that got touched. Something else got triggered first, and anger is what came to protect it.
Underneath most of it is disrespect, or an old wound that brought fear or shame, and nine times out of ten we don't even know it was there.
The one thing I had to be honest with myself about was this. Did my short temper ever produce what I was actually hoping for?
The answer was no. It didn't get me respect.
It made people fear me. It didn't make me any more understood either.
When I was able to think about this more deeply and more accurately, Proverbs 16:32 came to life for me.
"He that is slow to anger is better than the mighty; and he that ruleth his spirit than he that taketh a city."
Proverbs 16:32 (KJV)
God is basically saying that if a person can control his spirit and his emotions, he's doing something bigger than a person who conquers a whole city.
If you had any type of upbringing that was remotely close to mine, you understood that being angry got you what you would call respect. I had to unlearn that.
My idea of respect was different from God's. God says that type of energy was never strength.
Strength comes from a person who feels all of it and can still manage it, or who runs to the only One who can.
Here's what helped me work on the short fuse:
1. After you blow up, sit down and find out what actually got hit
Think about what you felt the second before you got hot. Was it disrespect? Were you scared? Maybe embarrassed? Maybe it was something from a past trauma. This way you can start to identify what sets off your anger before it takes over.
2. Ask God to reframe your timing to His timing
Paul said not to let the sun go down on it. That doesn't mean you have to be over it by nighttime. It means you take it to God before you go to sleep and ask Him not to let it carry over into your morning.
3. Don't try to manufacture patience
When somebody genuinely wronged you and you can't let it go, be honest with God about that instead of forcing yourself to look fine. Pray, and understand that you're not letting them get away with anything, because God sees it. He is a righteous judge and you have to remember that. A short fuse makes you the judge, and a judge running on emotion gets it wrong every time. The best thing you can do is hand it over to God, who actually has all the facts, saw all of the wrongdoing, and never gets it wrong.
PRAYER
Father God, You know I go from zero to a hundred faster than I want to admit.
Show me what's really underneath it, because I don't think it's what I've been blaming.
Thank You that You never told me to stop feeling, only to stop handing the enemy ground.
I bring the anger I've been carrying for years over to You tonight instead of taking it into another morning.
Grow patience in me, because I've tried to manufacture it on my own and it never held.
Thank You that You are the righteous judge, so I can finally put it down.
In Jesus' mighty name we pray. Amen.