anger management

One of the best scenes in Tommy Boy - quite possibly the best comedy of all time - is when Tommy and Richard fight it out. The fight takes place in front of Prehistoric Forest, which I have actually ridden by. We were heading to a concert with Tom, and there it was! Richard had been ripping on Tommy since the beginning of the movie, which started when they were kids, and Tommy had finally had enough. He had never dealt with the situation. He just took it...until he blew up.

I know that I haven't always dealt well with anger. To be more honest, I often don't handle it. I just let it sit, and I stew. I then view everything through my angry eyes. The sad thing is that my anger really affects me. It stresses me out and makes me sick to my stomach, but I often just deal with it the same way. I finally realized last year, however, what I was doing to myself. I was costing myself my sleep, peace, and my health. I was angry, and the object of my affection may have known, but certainly didn't care. I still remember when I finally realized my error: I was at Unleash, listening to Perry Noble speak. That conference rocked my world, and I'm excited to be going back again this year with this crazy guy.

I remember explaining my new revelation to my good friend, Shane. We were in the dumpy old church truck, on our way to drop off a hospital bed for an old lady who had just moved into a nursing home - I would have been trapped in there if not for Shane, cause I couldn't manage to open the door. We picked it up from her home. That place scared me; so did the big stain on the bed...but I had already agreed to move it before seeing its condition, so what could we do? Anyway, after explaining my new outlook on everything, he told me probably the cooliest thing I've ever been told by a teenager. He told me that since I had dealt with my anger/grudge issue, he had decided that he would view me the same way I view my my pastor. That was saying a lot. I hold my pastor in highest esteem. He is a true shepherd to his flock. So he tells me that he would view me this way, and look up to me just as I do to Pastor Moore. If I wasn't so manly, I might have cried, but as I am so manly, I did not.

What's the point? My anger was affecting me physically, but it was also affecting others: those that looked to me and followed my example. Shane was smart enough to see the flaw and wise enough to not embrace it, but what about others? My attitude, which leads to my actions, is observed and sometimes followed by teenagers, kids, nuns, yo-yo's, and corn fed church mice. We talk too much about intentional leadership and leading leaders, but what about the people we influence unintentionally? Who's following us, and what is it they are really following?