Washing Machines Should Be Inside the House!

“Help! Help! Let me out!” I screamed, as the sweat began to pour down my face.  Anger was slowly rising in me like a pot of boiling water.  We lived in a ‘tiny house’ before ‘tiny houses’ were cool!  So, my husband built a nice little shed in the back yard as a laundry room/tool shed, and I spent lots of time walking back and forth doing laundry.

One hot summer day, I was moving clothes from the washer to the dryer and putting in a new load of clothes.  My husband came in the shed, got something and left.  He, my daughter and new grandbaby were in the house.  When I finished and started back to the house, I pushed on the door and it wouldn’t open.  I pushed again – nothing.  As I looked through the crack I could see that my husband had bolted the door shut on the outside.  He absent-mindedly forgot that I was inside…or so he said!  I began banging on the door and screaming, but no one came to my rescue.  After several minutes of screaming and knocking, I realized they couldn’t hear me, so I sat down and waited.  I thought that after a few minutes they would miss me and come to check.  Didn’t happen!  So finally, after what seemed like hours in the hot shed, I began to panic, thinking I’d be stuck there the rest of my life!  I looked around for a tool.  I found a circular saw and figured out how to turn it on.  I tried to cut a hole through the door near the bolt so I could reach my hand through and free myself.  But, the saw kept jerking like a jackhammer and knocking me backward every time I tried to put the blade against the plywood door.  I was finally able to cut a line about 4 inches long, but realized that my plan of creating the hole in the door was hopeless.  I sat down again and I was really getting mad by this point.  Inside, my daughter said to my husband, “Mom must be building something or hanging a shelf out in the shed, I hear the saw!” Finally, I heard a dog barking, someone was walking down the road in front of the house and our dogs were going crazy.  My husband stepped outside to yell at the dogs and I seized the moment to bang on the door and yell again.  A few seconds later, he sheepishly unlatched the door and…needless to say, I went crazy on him!!!  Yep, I was angry.

James 1:19-20 says this:  “Understand this, my beloved brethren, Let every man be quick to hear (a ready listener), slow to speak, slow to take offense and to get angry, For man’s anger does not promote the righteousness God (wishes and requires).”  As professing Christians, unrestrained anger is a bad reflection on God.  It makes us appear weak and lacking self-control.  The scriptures about anger must be embedded in our minds and ready to be applied at a moment’s notice…like when you’re locked in your shed and it’s 110 degrees! Scripture isn’t just a bunch of wise words written a long time ago.  It actually contains supernatural power when it is APPLIED in our lives.  Knowing the words isn’t enough, memorizing isn’t enough, it’s actually applying the words to our everyday situations that makes them powerful.  The crystal clear choice was to control my anger and laugh about my husband’s patterned behavior to lock the door when he left the shed and to choose to believe it was an “accident”.

Granted, there are times when anger is justified, as Jesus himself displayed anger when the temple was being used as a marketplace and when people were just being hard headed.  There are also times when we are being mentally or physically abused, when anger is justified.  It’s okay to defend yourself or others against abuse, but not in anger.  If your response to mistreatment is given in anger, you take the spotlight off of the original wrong and the attention shifts to your wrong response.  When anger is your ‘go to’, people withdraw from you.  The proverbial ‘walking on eggshells’ becomes a reality in your home. Make a decision today that the next time circumstances activate anger in you, you are waiting for its arrival with these words in hand, “Fools give full vent to their rage, but the wise bring calm in the end” Proverbs 29:11.  Don’t be a fool, but put a stackable washer/dryer combo in a closet inside your house just in case!