Replacing Anger with Forbearance
I’m feeling really vulnerable as I write this piece. As of late, today’s topic is something that I really struggle with, and it’s a little scary for me to open up about this struggle. But I also believe in being real about this specific struggle we face as women in pregnancy and motherhood after loss and infertility. It is a club that no one wants to be a part of, and so it has been turned into this taboo thing that we only discuss in whispers. That’s not how we care for those who face this reality; instead, we have to be honest and vocal about the challenges that women in this club face, and if I’m going to be a voice into the world for us, then I have to lay it all out there.
I have mom rage.
There, I said it.
I am really struggling with anger on my journey through motherhood after loss and infertility. It is ugly and hard and makes me feel like the worst mother in the world. It is tied up in guilt and shame, two anxiety-inducing emotions we have already explored, which makes all of them all the harder to manage when they live in such close quarters. It’s nearly impossible to tackle one without tackling them all, and where I’m currently standing makes that a tall order.
I am smack in the middle of toddlerhood. Truthfully, I’m pretty close to the beginnings of it. My son is going to be 20 months old soon, and he is a high-energy, low-sleep-needs little boy. As a working mom, I go non-stop from the time I get to school at 7:15 in the morning until I leave at 3 or 4, and then I go non-stop from the time I pick Henry up from my mom’s until he goes to bed at 8. If I’m on bedtime duty, it goes even longer, depending on how long it takes him to fall asleep. I get very few moments to myself or with just my husband, very little time to rest. I’m either in teacher mode or mom mode or asleep.
Because my cup is always empty, I have a very low threshold for things that upset me. As of late, that tends to be battles with my husband. I take everything personally, when most of the time my husband has no ill intentions with his words. I feel like I’m responsible for everything when it comes to parenting, so I am resentful towards him even though he oftens helps, especially with bedtime in an attempt to get me some time to myself. It has seemed like we are constantly bickering- in the moment, I feel so justified in my anger, able to articulate everything he’s done to make me mad. But in hindsight, I’m just as culpable in how I respond to the situation, and sometimes I’m downright overreacting.
My prayers lately have been asking God to help me have patience and grace with my husband, but then I turn around and lose my cool ten minutes later. It’s like I have no control over my temper. Sometimes even I don’t understand why I’m so angry about something so small.
Anger doesn’t just rear its ugly head in motherhood. Anger is something that has boiled under the surface for me for a long time. Throughout my battle with infertility, there were times when I was so angry at our circumstances, so angry even at God. Why was He doing this to me? I looked out into the world and saw children neglected, abused, and abandoned by parents who didn’t want them, yet there I was, longing for a child to love and care for, and still He denied me that blessing. Then when we finally did get pregnant and I miscarried a week later, there was a part of me that thought God was being spiteful. He knew how badly I wanted that baby, and yet He yanked it away like a bully playing keep-away with a little kid’s toy.
So when our first IVF cycle was successful and I was finally expecting my Rainbow Baby, that anger, while it seemed to subside, simmered under the surface as anxiety. Having felt angry all those years about my circumstances, wronged by God for allowing or causing all the suffering I’d endured, I half expected Him to do something else to continue my pain. I was ready to boil over at the tiniest situation, and that has carried into motherhood. The only difference is now the stress levels are so much higher, that I boil over often.
So this piece is an exercise in putting my money where my mouth is. I’ve been praying for God’s patience and grace to come in and soothe my anger, but I haven’t been doing the work to access it. When we ask God to give us any of His good things, we can’t just sit back and expect Him to fill us up if we’re not digging into His Word. That is how we will be filled, so we have to put in the time with Him.
When I dove into Scripture on the hunt for a remedy for my anger, I found what I need on the list of the Fruits of the Spirit in Galatians 5: “But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. Against such things there is no law” (verse 22-23, emphasis mine). Honestly, there are a lot of good candidates on that list for remedying anger- kindness, gentleness, self-control… But let’s look at the definition of forbearance.
“Patient self-control, restraint and tolerance.”
Here’s why I honed in on this particular fruit of the Spirit:
First of all, self-control is in there, which I think is truly necessary for battling anger.
Second, it doubles down with the word “restraint.” Being able to keep our anger under control and within limits allows space for the feeling to still exist, but to be manageable. Let’s face it; some things in life deserve our anger (we’ll get to that) but we need to keep from exploding.
Lastly, that word “tolerance” indicates how we can approach anger when it comes to our relationships. Sadly, in our humanness, we tend to be angry with someone rather than at a situation. So having the ability to tolerate others in love is crucial.
If you’re feeling discouraged, don’t worry- I was too at this point. But I pressed on, looking for all the places in Scripture where forbearance is discussed. The first thing I discovered is that the KJV typically uses “longsuffering” instead of “forbearance” in most verses that contain this idea. If you are feeling a little prickly about that word, me too. No one wants to endure suffering, let alone for a long time. But when we are able to have patience in spite of the troubles we face, we become the master of our anger.
The first place this word appears in Scripture is in Exodus 34, but its use requires some back story. At this point in Exodus, Moses has led the people out of Egypt and through the Red Sea; they have not yet reached the Promised Land. At the end Exodus 24, Moses goes up the mountain to meet with the Lord and stays up there for 40 days, getting instructions for God for building the tabernacle, creating all its instruments, preparing the priests, how to observe the Sabbath and more. These instructions are detailed in chapters 25 through 31, and at the end of chapter 31, God gives Moses two tablets that He has inscribed with His fingers.
In Exodus 32, back down below, the Israelites are getting impatient and demand that Aaron, the head priest, make them a golden calf to worship. This is an egregious form of idolatry, and back on the mountain, God tells Moses to get back down to the people because His anger is burning against them.
In the KJV, verse 32:10 uses “wrath” to describe God’s emotion here. The Hebrew word here means anger, but it also means nostril, nose, or face. I thought this odd until one description mentioned “rapid breathing in passion” due to ire. This picture definitely portrays how my anger tends to manifest itself! The only thing I noted from this definition is that, while this word can be used to describe human anger, it is more often used to describe “divine anger.” God is perfect, and therefore His anger is perfect. Knowing that His people are worshiping a statue they themselves made after He rescued them from Pharaoh and Egypt, His anger is completely justified here. There are times when our anger will be justified, too. But what God does in response to His anger is where we as humans typically fall short.
When God commands Moses to leave His presence because of His anger, Moses intercedes for the people, asking God to show mercy on them. And so God relents. He abandons His harsh intentions, and sends Moses to deal with the people.
Now after this divine example of how to respond to anger, you’d think that Moses would be primed to do the same. But alas… When he gets to the bottom of the mountain and witnesses their idolatry for himself, his own anger burns and he throws the tablets God inscribed to the ground, smashing them. The same Hebrew word is used here. This is human anger, but it is still justified. The Israelites have committed a major sin and risked being destroyed by God. But Moses’s reaction shows that he does not have control over His anger as God did, and in the process destroys some seriously holy objects.
Ultimately, Moses has to return to the mountain and have God remake the tablets because of what he has done out of anger. It is here where we see the first usage of “forbearance” in Scripture. The KJV translates it “longsuffering.” After giving Moses the new tablets, He proclaims, “The LORD, the LORD, the compassion and gracious God, slow to anger, abounding in love and faithfulness, maintaining love to thousands, and forgiving wickedness, rebellion and sin. Yet he does not leave the guilty unpunished…” (Exodus 34: 6-7a NIV, emphasis mine). The Israelites suffer consequences for their idolatry; God sends a plague upon them. But He also shows them mercy by not canceling their covenant; when Moses goes up the mountain a second time, He renews the covenant with the Israelites.
The Hebrew word used in this passage means “patient of spirit.” In this particular passage, it is paired with the Hebrew word for “anger,” indicating that it is a direct response to this emotion. The fact that this definition includes the Spirit indicates to me that the only place to get this level of patience is directly from God. We have to tap into our relationship with Him constantly. We have to be rooted in Scripture. We have to have examples of godly forbearance to use against the devil when he tries to coax our anger into flying off the handle.
The best example of this in Scripture- in my opinion anyway- is Paul. In 2 Corinthians 6:6, he describes himself as being longsuffering. You can find this description of him nestled in a portion of the letter that describes his ministry, which came with a great deal of hardships. He faced beatings, imprisonments, riots, hard work, sleepless nights, hunger, bad reports against him, financial hardship, and sorrow. But mixed into this list of hardship, he also describes how he faced them: great endurance, purity, understanding, patience, kindness, sincere love, truthful speech, genuine, rejoicing. You can’t ask for a clearer picture of longsuffering!
The Greek word used here for “longsuffering” means “patience, endurance, constancy, steadfastness, perseverance, slow to avenge wrongs, shown in bearing troubles and ills.” In our humanness, we want to avenge the wrongs we perceive done to us. And we want to do it now! When we feel slighted, we defend and we demand retraction. But this is not how Paul faced his troubles. He sat in jail when he was imprisoned for sharing the Gospel. He willingly faced death multiple times and was eventually martyred. He didn’t fight fire with fire. He approached all of this with rejoicing and continued to share the Gospel.
How can we share the Gospels with others when we’re too busy shouting about how we’ve been wronged? Simply put, we can’t. If we want our children to see the light of Jesus in us, we have to show some restraint and tolerance, and endure the wrongs done to us with forbearance. It’s the least we can do when God has been unendingly patient with us.
“The Lord is not slow in keeping his promise, as some understand slowness. Instead he is patient with you, not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance. …Bear in mind that our Lord’s patience [longsuffering] means salvation…” (2 Peter 3:9, 15a). If God was not longsuffering, we’d have been destroyed long ago by His wrath. Yet He shows restraint in His desire that all mankind would be saved. If that is how the God of the world sees us, can’t we show at least a fraction of that restraint by not losing it on our husbands when they forget to empty the dishwasher?
When we trade our anger for forbearance, we allow ourselves to find joy again. We don’t cling to the grudges of wrongs done because our security is in God and not our circumstances. We can know that our self-restraint will lead to blessings of the heart. There will be peace in our pregnancy. There will be peace in our families. And we will be able to shine the light of Jesus to our kids, which is to the glory of His kingdom.
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