“Good sense makes one slow to anger, and it is his glory to overlook an offense.”
My Dearest MacKynzie-
No matter what I try, laundry seems to be a never ending chore in our household. As you and your brother have gotten older, you’ve taken some of the responsibility but somehow I still end up spending hours and hours each week gathering and spraying and washing and folding. One thing that drives me absolutely crazy is when layers of clothes are taken off together so they have to be peeled apart before they go into the washer. Half of them are turned inside out in the process and have to be flipped back right. The dad of the household (not saying any names because I’m not one to snitch) is the one that leaves the most of these layered laundry gifts. He works outside a lot in the winter and wears 4 or 5 long sleeve shirts at a time and takes them all of together at once and throws the into the basket. Often times I stand in front of the washer grunting and pouting about having to spend an extra 5 minutes in the cold garage pulling the shirts apart. The dialogue that goes on in my head is exactly this: ‘I’ve asked him 100 times to take his shirts off one by one, how disrespectful of him to not think of me. I work and I slave and he doesn’t appreciate anything that I do for him.’ In other words, my first reaction is to take it as a personal attack on me. He works long days in the freezing cold to provide for our family and all he is thinking about when he gets home is getting comfortable. I take it personal and complain about standing in a cold garage for 5 minutes. We do this a lot don’t we? Someone snaps at us because they have had a really long day or they are going through a tough time and our immediate reaction is to fluff all up and get offended. God calls us to be better than that. He challenges us not to respond in anger, but instead respond in love.
“See to it that no one misses the grace of God and that no bitter root grows up to cause trouble and defile many”
“Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.”
Most of the time when someone gets angry at us or does something that we think is disrespectful, it is not a personal attack on us. It is a reaction to something that they are personally going through or a perspective that they hold that is different than ours. It’s our narcissistic human reaction to put our ourselves in the middle of the narrative, making the story about us. This does not help or solve anything and it is not how God is calling us to respond.
My loving advice to you. Put yourself in your shoes. What I mean by that is to decide ahead of time that you are not going to be a person that reacts in anger. You will make a choice to not get offended. You are instead going to be a person walking in love and grace and compassion for those around you no matter what comes at you. Nice people are easy to love but what about the depressed, angry people that need our love the most?
My love to you and my prayer for an amazing life! Live to inspire <3 to create!
The purpose of this letter is to inspire my daughter MacKynzie to live a prosperous, God loving, joyful, legacy building life. Who knows, it may help you too. Please ‘like’ if you found this letter useful and please ‘share’ if you want to help inspire others. You never know who is watching ;)