For pressing milk produces curds, pressing the nose produces blood, and pressing anger produces strife.

Proverbs‬ ‭30‬:‭33

I didn’t really know what anger was when I got sober.

I’d come to sobriety in relative ease and comfort when compared to others around me. I’d not been through the emotional wringer like some had.

But I was still pretty raw. I was still hurting. I was still pissed.

It was all centered around me. If I focused in on the anger, it was apparent that I was upset for having to stop…for progressing to the point of problems…for having to come out into the light and face things.

I didn’t even fully know it in those early months, but anger was the touchstone, the trigger by which my fate in recovery could be decided or postponed.

Many are led away by the simple stance of staying grim. And I’ve held it too. Who hasn’t stayed bitter and angry at their own cost?

Being cut off from the sunlight of the spirit is precisely what happens when I allow anger to sit unchecked in any aspect of my life.

It’s dangerous. It spreads. It will permeate the rest of my life because it knows no bounds. It cannot merely stay put on a single thing. It corrupts the good things nearby.

Truer words were never said: “we must get rid of this anger, or it will kill us.”

Now that escalated quickly. But I must remember what the end game of the enemy is.

Bitterness is a subtle tool that will pull me downward faster than I can recognize what’s happening.

God, save me from being angry; keep me in action, moving forward.