Ill Temper

A Scottish theologian, Henry Drummond, once wrote,

"the peculiariaty of ill temper is that it is the vice of the virtuous. It is often the one blot on an otherwise noble character. You know men who are all but perfect, and women who would be entirely perfect, but for an easily ruffled, quick-tempered or 'touchy' disposition. This compatibility of ill temper with high moral character is one of the strangest and saddest problems of ethics....No form of vice, not worldliness, not greed of gold, not drunkenness itself, does more to un-Christianize society than evil temper. For embittering life, for breaking up communities; for destroying the most sacred relationships; for devastating homes; for withering up men and women; for taking the bloom of childhood; in short, for sheer gratuitous misery-producing power, this influence stands alone....There is really no place in heaven for a disposition like this. A man with such a mood could only make Heaven miserable for all the people in it. Except, therefore, such a man be born again, he cannot, he simply cannot, enter the Kingdom of Heaven" (Greatest Thing in the World, 35,36,37)

Wow! What a quote. I've noticed myself getting more short tempered with my family lately. I am not very good at asking them to do things, so I ask (timidly) once or twice and if they don't do it, I just grumble and get cross and do it myself. I don't like myself when I am cross, and when I don't like myself I get even more hard to live with. Then, because I am cross and ornery, they get cross and ornery and no one is happy. That is no way to live.

I need to make a stronger effort to ask directly for what I want and to continue to kindly (but firmly) encourage family members to do what I ask until it is done. I need to do that without getting angry or cranky.

It's not really fair that the Mom sets the emotional tone of the home, but it is true. Dad can be cranky and tired and everyone else can still be happy around him, but when Mom gets angry and hard to deal with, the whole house gets mean.