I can get so angry at the smallest things.
A messy room. Spilled milk. My daughter dancing in the grocery store. A cup left on the counter. A question asked one too many times. Shoes in the middle of the hallway.
But here is the truth, mamma. I am not angry at the cup. I am not angry at the shoes. I am not angry at my daughter dancing.
My mind and my body are so locked down into survival mode that I give harsh words to something small. I get angry at myself, or at my family, for small mistakes. For simply being who they are. For making a noise I cannot handle in a body that has been holding too much for too long.
And the worst part is what happens next.
When I am angry, the whole home becomes angry.
I am the thermostat.
Not the thermometer. The thermometer just reads the room. The thermostat sets it. If I am cold, the house is cold. If I am tight and clipped and short of breath, the house is tight. My oldest feels it first, he always has. Then my daughter. Then the baby. Whatever I am, the room becomes.
That is a hard sentence to sit with, because part of me wants to argue. They are responsible for their own attitudes too. And they are, in time. But not yet. They are little. They are watching me to learn what a feeling looks like. They are reading my face before they read the room. And what I bring into the kitchen is what the kitchen becomes.
So let's go deeper. Because Proverbs tells us a gentle answer turns wrath away. But how does a mamma in the fire give a gentle answer when she is one cup-on-the-counter away from coming undone?
She has to look at what is actually under the anger.
Here is the question I have learned to ask myself when I feel it rising.
What is on my mind right now?
Because it is rarely on the thing I am about to blow up at. For me, it is the side effects of chemo. The test results I haven't heard back yet. Every bruise on his leg. His flushed cheeks at the dinner table. The bills. The doctors I am still waiting on. The mammas in my group whose babies are not okay.
That is what is really in the room when I snap at a spilled cup.
The cup is not the cup. The cup is everything I am carrying, finally finding somewhere to spill.
And the more I worry, the more I get angry at the little things. The worry has to go somewhere. If I do not give it somewhere to go, it goes into my voice, and my voice goes into my children.
But mamma, Paul tells us exactly what to do with it.
"Be anxious for nothing, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God. And the peace of God, which surpasses all comprehension, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus."Philippians 4:6–7
Read it slow.
He does not say stop being anxious. He does not say try harder to calm down. He does not say just have more faith. He gives us the how.
In everything. Every worry. The big ones. The chemo. The marriage. The bills. The small ones too. The shoes in the hallway. All of it.
By prayer and supplication. Not silently. Out loud. Lord, I am scared about his counts. Lord, I am tired. Lord, I do not know how I am going to make it through this day without coming undone on my children.
With thanksgiving. That word is sitting right there in the middle of the verse, and most of us skip over it. How do you give thanks while you are afraid? You do not have to pretend the fear is not there. You find the one true thing. He is here today. I am here today. We are still in the fight. You say that out loud to God before the worry takes the whole room.
Let your requests be made known to God. Hand them over. Tell Him what you need. He already knows. But there is something that happens to a worry when you say it out loud to the One who can actually hold it. It gets smaller. Not the situation. The grip it has on you.
And then the verse promises something.
The peace of God, which surpasses all comprehension, will guard your hearts and your minds.
Guard. That is a military word. A sentry. A soldier at the gate. Peace as something that stands at the door of your heart and your mind, so the worry cannot break in and burn the house down.
The peace is not the absence of the worry. The peace is what holds the line while you keep walking through the day.
But here is what I have to tell you, mamma, because if I do not, this whole verse stays beautiful and useless on the page.
Giving your worries to God is not a one-time deposit.
It is a muscle. You have to exercise it every single day. Some days every hour. Some days every second.
The worry is going to creep back. You will hand it to Him in the morning and find it back in your chest by lunch. That does not mean you are doing it wrong. It means you are human. You hand it back. And then you hand it back again. And then you hand it back again. The verse does not say pray once. It says in everything. Every time. Every worry. Every minute, if that is what it takes.
That is the practice. Not a fix. A turning back, over and over, until turning back becomes a reflex.
And here is what I have noticed in my own house. The more I give my worry to God, the better my soul feels, and the better my home feels. The thermostat starts to come down. Not because the worry is gone. Because something stronger than the worry is holding the line.
A gentle answer turns away wrath.
She cannot give one out of an empty, terrified tank. She can give one out of a tank that has been quietly, repeatedly, secondly handed over to God.
So tomorrow morning, when the cup is on the counter and the shoes are in the hallway and the baby is crying and your husband walks in and says the wrong thing, ask yourself the question first.
What is actually on my mind right now?
Name it.
Hand it over.
And hand it over again at lunch.
And again at three.
And again at bedtime.
That is the muscle, mamma. That is how the thermostat comes down. That is how a gentle answer becomes something you can actually give, because you are not the one carrying it anymore.
You are not weak for needing to hand it over a hundred times a day.
You are doing exactly what Paul said to do.
In everything.