Surrendering Anger & My Boys

For our 40 days of surrender my family has decided to give up anger...

an·ger [ áng gər ]
noun
Definition:
displeasure: a strong feeling of grievance and displeasure; an emotional state that may range from minor irritation to intense rage. (Note: my boys)
anger - The Bible describes the anger or wrath of God as being his abiding reaction to human sin and an expression of his justice; it is not a sudden or passionate upsurge of emotion. He is ‘slow to anger’ (Ps. 103: 8). (Note: NOT my boys)

How's it going? Well lets just say that the boys who, by the way, are the ones who came up with the idea of giving up anger, are failing miserably. It seems that they have no concept of what it means to give up.

For example, today they hadn't been in the car together for more than 5 seconds, and no I am not exaggerating, they started in on each other. Zach got mad at Kevin for who knows what and Kevin responded in anger. This is typical of my boys. Every time they have responded in anger to each other I have reminded them, sometimes gently and others not so gently, that they are not doing a good job of surrendering. To which they usually reply, "Well he started it!" Which sets off another round of fighting. Sigh! Up until this point I can keep MY anger under control. Then I get angry. Then Ted gets angry with the boys for making me angry. To which Tori responds by yelling in anger, "Will you all just shut-up!".

So, you can see how well our 40 days of surrendering anger is going. Or, in our case, not going. I wonder if we wired the boys mouths shut for the next 3 weeks we could win the war on anger? Probably, but that would miss the point of surrendering. So we will forge on and hope for the best tomorrow.