003: Anger & Discipline

-Transcript-

Bruce: Welcome to episode three of our Unshackled Love podcast. My name is Bruce Payne. I'm sitting here with my gorgeous bride.

Kaila: Kaila Payne, and for those of you who are just joining us, Bruce and I are two teachers in the greater Austin area, and we are blessed to parent nine beautiful children, our oldest being a senior in high school and our youngest being in kindergarten and everything in between.

We are here tonight on our Unshackled Love podcast to talk about a topic that is very near and dear and fresh in our hearts,

Bruce: anger and discipline. And I'll just sit there and say this right now. I don't know if anyone else here has ever had the experience where you plan something awesome for a weekend and the next thing you know before it even gets started, the crap hits the fan.

It just does. And, the next thing you know, it's, you're tain is not just going off the tracks, but it's going off the bridge, plummeting into the ocean. If you can have that visual in your head, that's pretty much what just happened our week in this past weekend. And as a result, I, I felt it on my heart and, our hearts, as we talked about it and prayed about it afterwards to sit here and discuss it. You know, it's something that as parents, we, we go through this, the act of discipline on a regular basis with our kids, especially us with nine. Especially the kids who wanna act more like their mom than me.

I mean, if they act more like me, we wouldn't have to discipline as much cuz I'm an angel.

Kaila: Right...

Bruce: and then the anger part, you know, Anger is one of those things that, can come at any time of the day and it spares no one, especially with people who, have anger as their spiritual gift like my wife does. Just kidding. It is not your spiritual gift. That's an inside joke. We've been talking about spiritual gifts today, which is a whole nother topic for a different day. And so anyways, yeah, we are here to discuss anger and discipline.

Kaila: Now, the reason that we need to talk about anger is because it's something that resides in all of us, and I think that we can't ignore it or just push it in the closet and pretend it doesn't happen and put on our smiling face out in public.

I once heard a pastor who was talking about controlling our emotions, and he said, "Oh, you can control your emotions because think about that time when you're in the middle of a fight and the phone rings and you answer that phone, "Hello" , like nothing's wrong, right? So you have the ability, we all have the ability to control our emotions, but how often do we let our emotions control us. And with anger, if you look at the root cause of why people get angry, most of the time it's because of a me issue. It's because of my pride and me not getting what I want or someone doing something that's not the way I would do it or different than how I thought it should be done. And so if we look at the reasons why we get angry, usually it's because it's me, it's my issue. It's something that's going against what I want.

Bruce: Absolutely. And I think if you look at our kids, right? I use our five year old who's my princess. She doesn't have a mean bone in her body. What are the chances she's sitting there on purpose, sitting there trying to push my buttons and tick me off.

Like the times that I do get angry with her, which are pretty much never, but I'm used using her as an example, cause I talk about her brothers all the time, so I'm gonna use her for the example. How often does she purposely sit there and say, "Hey, I'm gonna sit here and try to tick daddy off." The reality is none of our kids do right. Nor do you, for the most part.

And so the reality is you have to sit here and look at your kids and your spouse and see what they're doing that's making you angry, cause as you said, it's more of a me problem than you problem. You know, in the heart, I once certain someone say that love and anger or love and hatred or love, whatever words you want to use, they're very close in the heart, right next to each other, right?

And in order to get that ticked off at someone, you have to care about them in order for them to hurt you like that to a point, if that makes sense.

Kaila: And we also have to be aware of what is it? Like, why is it bothering us? What is it about that action that makes me upset? Knowing those triggers, knowing what gets under our skin.

So, I mean, can we, can we get real, Can we talk about it?

Bruce: Yes, absolutely.

Kaila: Okay. So for me, I will just admit, the one thing that gets under my skin, that pushes my buttons, that it's like, if the kids do this, you better "whoof boy watch out," is when they correct me.

Bruce: Absolutely. So for those of you right now, I'm gonna give you a visual, okay.

For some people, when they get angry, they're passive aggressive. For other people, when they get angry, they sit there and they use their mouth. For some, they wear their emotions on their sleeve. Or, when you're my wife, you can do all the above and you become dual-lingual, bilingual, whatever you wanna say. And she uses her hands so you know that she's mad with her mouth and her face and the blubbering tears that kind of come out and her hands moving back and forth.

If mama's hands are moving back and forth as she's sitting there talking at the same speed, you know you better run because if there's any object in the vicinity, it's kinda chucked at you.

Kaila: I mean, okay, I'm throwing things? I don't know. But bilingual and moving my hands, yes, I'm very animated and I can become very expressive.

And I think that the reason, so again, it goes back to, well, why? Why is that such a trigger for me when I'm corrected? And I think it comes back to the fact that I think of myself as a very intellectual, thoughtful person. I like to learn. I like to study. I like to research. I like to think of things from different perspectives.

I like to be efficient, so when I'm thinking about an answer, I'm thinking about on a response or I'm thinking about our plans for the day and I come up with a plan. I've put a lot of thought into it and so,

Bruce: Talk about it's all order, especially for a blonde.

Kaila: I mean, that's a compliment. Thank you. So for, you know, my seven year old to come back and say, "Well, what about this?"

or like, "What about that?" I kind of go on the defense because I'm like, "No, I already thought about that. We're doing it this way because I've already thought about all the other options and it's not your job to tell me how we're gonna do the day." And sometimes, I will admit, I overreact.

Bruce: Just a little bit. We're being real here.

Kaila: We're being real. We're being real. I overreact, but I know that it's a me issue. I know it's a me problem and I know that I need to acknowledge that in order to be able to respond better, but this isn't just about me. What about you, honey? What gets under your skin? What pushes your buttons?

Bruce: Well, since we we're talking about, you know, spiritual gifts for mine is patience, so I'm good all the time.

Kaila: Okay, we're being real. Not fake.

Bruce: That was real. Not real? No. The reality is for me, as I mentioned prior podcast, I was a fun kid growing up. I was a spirited kid. I was one of the kids who got in trouble from the time I came out of the womb, it seemed like.

And everything that my kids have attempted to do, that they do do that they think about doing, I've already been there, done that. On top of sitting there, here's a little bit more background about me teaching. I've taught behavior kids in rough neighborhoods. I've been around cops, probation officers. You know it.

So for me it's a little bit different, right? And so, being the kid I was growing up, and then teaching what I've taught and then being a coach to a bunch of different young men, in various areas of the United States, I've seen a lot. I wouldn't say all because only God's seen it all, but the realize I've seen a lot, right?

And so when my own kids wanna sit there and do something dumb, and I can see it coming from, 10 miles away, 10 steps before they even think about doing it. I'm like, "Hey homie, you might not want to do that because this is gonna happen. You might not wanna do it because you might get in trouble. Actually, you will get in trouble."

and we can get more than that a little bit later 'cause that's pretty much what started our weekend, this last weekend. And so, for me it's like, hey, I've already been there, done that, and as a result I'm trying to spare my kids. But at the end of the day, it's not for me to necessarily spare my kids.

I've learned and I'm learning and I'm continuing to learn that they're gonna be those days that I have to let them skin their knees and go through it. But what gets me the most angry more times not is them doing something dumb, even though I've already warned them 49 times not to do it.

Kaila: Mm. It's like touching the stove, right? Don't touch a stove...

Bruce: don't touch a hot stove, otherwise you can get burned. And then you do it 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10 times, and all of a sudden now you have burns all over your hands. You're like, what are you doing that for? It could have been avoided in the first place. I mean, especially with some of our more, strong willed children, aka "mommy juniors".

I'm just kidding. I'm probably just as strong willed. The reality is, man, I sit there and see it and it's just like, "Why?" And they look at you and I'm like, "I've been there before. I've done that before. I've done it better than you. And I got away with it. At least my parents didn't see me do it. Maybe in God's eyes I didn't get away with it, which is what counts. But at the end of the day, I did it a lot better than you did."

And then my kids just look at me and they're like, shake their head. "You're right."

Kaila: But even though anger is a natural emotion that I would say every single person on this earth faces. I think it's no coincidence that the Bible is so clear about turning away from anger and controlling our anger.

Like in Psalms 37: 8, it says "Stop being angry. Turn away from your rage. Do not lose your temper. It only leads to harm."

Bruce: And I'm gonna cut you off right there. I think this is so important. This verse is so important in so many different ways, right? In itself, stop being angry. God's saying straight up, Stop being angry.

I think especially when you're disciplining your kid, you don't want to discipline out of anger.

Kaila: Mm-hmm.

Bruce: Right? There's so many things that require discipline and require you to sit there and do something towards your kid, whether it's grounding, whether it's spanking, whatever it might be, whatever form of discipline that you believe in.

There are a lot of things that call for discipline throughout our day, throughout our week, throughout our month and year, right? The biggest difference though, is doing it out of love and in anger, right? And so going back to the heart. They're right next to each other. That heart of love and anger are right there.

And you can choose in the moment, do I wanna sit there and do it outta love and be loving and kind and caring as I discipline them so they understand why they're being disciplined. Or do I fly off the handle out of anger, which is what happened this past weekend with a kid or two, and as a result, it turned ugly.

Like it didn't need to turn ugly. And so are you disciplining out of anger or are you disciplining out of love? It's a big thing for those of us who, and this is me talking to myself like I'm looking in the mirror right now as I say this. Five years ago, maybe my wife, but right now me. When I discipline, if I can't handle and sit there and discipline outta love right away, maybe I gotta take a step away for a minute, or five, or 10 and say, "Go to your room" as I calm down.

Because like I said, just my background with teaching and coaching and being around kids a lot. It's like, man, my own TKs, you know, they talk about PKS all the time, "preacher kids". What about teacher kids? I mean, It's tough. And they know it. And they see it, and they've been around it, yet they still do it because they're human.

Kaila: Mm-hmm. And anger in itself isn't the sin either, because the reality is, is God gets angry, God got angry, God gets angry, like, God hates our sin.

And there's plenty of instances in the Bible where you see God unleash his wrath on mankind because he's a jealous God. And so when we're living in sin and we're turning away from God, that makes God angry. And you can look at Jesus, like Jesus in the temple, when he saw the people taking advantage of the temple, which was supposed to be the holy, sacred place.

He flipped over tables, man.

Bruce: Absolutely. Homeboy JC wasn't the little JC that had the lamb around his neck at all times, maybe, if at all. I don't know. Maybe he did. Maybe he didn't. Maybe they sit there and they saw that from an image depicted of him a long, long time ago. I don't know.

The reality is our JC, our Jesus Christ, that we sit here and follow and wanna model our lives after. Had some, some waves, man, that's the end of the day. He did. He was willing to stick for what was right, including clearing out that temple that day that you're talking about. So I think it's important to understand and realize that the Jesus that we follow isn't this mild and meek Jesus. Some of the things that he did was meek and mild. The way in which he came across at times is how we should act. But it doesn't mean he was meek and mild and everything he did.

Kaila: And then I think the other lesson to take from that is that it's not bad to get angry, but we need to recognize, "am I getting angry out of my own selfish desires and my pride or is my heart angry because this is something that goes against God and my heart is angry for God and there's righteous anger."

And so there is that sense of, "Okay, well how does this apply? Am I righteous in my anger because this is offending me? What my kids did offends me? And so I'm angry 'cause it offended me, like not listening to my advice or trying to prove me wrong or tell me that I'm wrong and well, I'm just mad because you're telling me I'm wrong and that that's a pride issue.

But am I angry because they did something and I'm angry at the sin. I'm angry at, what's breaking in their lives or in their worlds or how they're not following God? What are they doing that's not following Jesus? And so making sure that there's also that distinction between, I'm angry at the sin and my heart hurts over this, but not being angry at the person.

I think it's okay also to express that to our children, that righteous anger and being angry over things. Not that we should never be angry, but just that discernment between which is appropriate and which isn't. So, as we were talking about this, I just so happened, not even me, God, so happened to give me this passage.

I'm reading through the Bible in a year and Bruce and I had already talked about our weekend and wanting to talk about this anger issue. And I'm reading my Bible today and it was like God just said, "Here you go. Here's the passage that is gonna tie perfectly into this." And so if you have your Bibles and you wanna open up with me, it's 2 Timothy chapter two, and I'm gonna read a little passage here: verses 23 to 26.

It says, "Again, I say, Don't get involved in foolish, ignorant arguments that only start fights. A servant of the Lord must not quarrel, but must be kind to everyone, be able to teach. And be patient with difficult people. Gently instruct those who oppose the truth. Perhaps God will change those people's hearts and they will learn the truth. Then they will come to their senses and escape from the devil's trap. For they have been held captive by him to do whatever. He wants."

And I heard that chuckle when I said difficult people 'cause you know the difficult people I'm talking about, don't you?

Bruce: Absolutely. And I think before we go to the difficult people, I think there's another part of this verse that just sticks out to me and it says, "gently instruct those who oppose the truth. Perhaps God will change those people's hearts."

And this goes back to the conversation that Kaila and I had this week, is that even though we can sit here and raise our kids in a Christian home and show 'em what the love of Jesus looks like and how a disciple of Jesus should look like, in order for it to click with them, it needs to be personal for them, it needs to be a relationship that they have and they take ownership of.

And for every kid it's different. You know, for some, you hear about prodigal sons and daughters who come back at a later date who aren't ready when they live in their parents' home, whatever might be. And that's the reality, right? And it's not in our timing. It's just like when I sit there and I tell my kids, "Don't do something because you know it's gonna bite you in the butt", but at the end of the day, Same with their relationship with God, It's like, Hey, I can tell you how much better your life will be if you follow Jesus, if you follow God.

But if you choose not to, man, you're gonna go through a lot more ups and downs. And when you do, and maybe not necessarily more ups and downs, but at least when you go through those ups and downs of life, those peaks and values that we go through, at least you have God right there by your side.

Kaila: Right, and that was exactly what stood out to me is because when we are disciplining our kids, when we don't see eye to eye with them, I need to be able to control my anger. To not engage in ignorant arguments.

ignorant.

Bruce: Ignorant. And it is, And and that's what happened with our weekend last weekend. Right.

There, there was a series of ignorance, conversations and, and we'll just start here. The ignorance started on Thursday. The ignorant conversation started Thursday when one of our kids decided it was a good idea to sleep through their alarm, and then thought that they would take a Lyft to school without us knowing.

I mean, that's what kind of started off. And from there I was trying to sit there and be understanding, understanding it's been a long year. But there's also been other things that have gone on that have contributed to this child of ours, being tired throughout the week, like having a job during the week, even though we've asked them not to work.

Amongst some other things going on. And so that was the start of the ignorant conversation on both our ends, things coming out of our mouth. That I regret saying. As the weekend started, I think the part that riled us up that went into the ignorant conversation was that, on Friday as a high school football game they wanted to go to. We were nice enough to sit there...

I don't know if you wanna call it grace or mercy or a little bit of both, but we let this child go to the game and there was some requirements that went along with it. And low and behold, Saturday morning, part of the requirements was they were gonna come to Serve Day at church with me. We were supposed to wake up, we were supposed to go to Serve Day, where we were gonna go do some outreach to some folks who needed extra help.

I wake up, alarm goes off, I get ready, and guess what? The same kid who had trouble sleeping in during a Thursday for school was sleeping again as he was supposed to be ready for when we went out to serve. So paint the picture. I'm sitting there with two of our other boys ready to go work. My 16 year old daughter ready to go work, ready to go serve.

And the next thing I know, instead of getting in our car and being super excited, I end up in the car. I take a driver around the block, I drop off our oldest kid, put 'em back in the house, take off. Cursing underneath my breath like, "why can't we just sit here and figure this out?" that was Saturday.

And then Sunday even went more downhill and there's no need to get into that. But the reality is there was a bunch of ignorant conversations happening. And I think part of the biggest thing is, is with a, with a believer who believes in God and who has a good walk with God, the conversation I had would've been different than with a kid who's still sitting there struggling to find their way.

Does that make sense?

Kaila: Yeah, absolutely. Just because they are raised under us and under our wings, and we can lead by example and we can show them, but like Bruce mentioned earlier, they at some point are going to have to choose Jesus for themselves. They're gonna have to choose to have a relationship.

And I think that's why there's verses like this that are so crucial to our role as parents because we have to realize that until they make that decision for themselves, we are dealing with unbelievers. And their heart it says, "then they will come to their senses". So we have to remember they have their blinders on.

And so everything that we do in the way that we discipline, if you joined us last week, you heard me talk about how the word discipline really comes from the word disciple. And so this is where God is telling us this is how we disciple our children as unbelievers, and the ways that we do that are that we have to be kind, we have to be able to teach, and we have to be patient.

And so that, those are straight from that passage in 2 Timothy: kind, able to teach, and patient. Again, going back to controlling our anger and controlling our emotions in order to choose kindness, teaching them through that and then teaching them what, what am what are we teaching them?

If we're doing our jobs as parents, what we should be teaching them is, what does God say about this? What is God's heart about this? Again, taking the me pride out of it and saying, Well, this is what God says and this is what God is angry over, or this is what God wants to see. This is how God wants you to live your life.

So teaching them according to God's word and then being patient. Yeah, it's gonna happen. They're gonna mess up, They're gonna scrape their knees, they're gonna fall down. They're gonna do the things you said not to do because they have to figure it out for themselves.

Bruce: And I'm gonna take this one step further. I think it's, it doesn't just go with your kids, like what we're talking about right now, the premise of what we're talking about, it's not only for your kids, man. It is for everybody we come in contact with. It's for people who we work with, people who we live with, people who we go to school with, whatever it might be. Think about this: when's the last time you've gotten on board with somebody who's straight up yelling, getting angry?

You know, think of a boss. You sit there and you mess up in your job, how much respect and how are you gonna respond to somebody who's yelling at you, cursing at you, putting you down, telling you you're not worth anything or no good compared to a boss who's like, "Hey, you wanna know what I understand you messed up, but you're human and and you wanna know what we can do it again and try it over, right?"

And so I think it's important in life to understand, especially with parenting, but in life in general, it's important to be kind and you gotta be patient. You wanna know what, think about all the things that we get mad at each other for our kids for, Right? And we can sit here and say, as I've said, I can get super angry and even ticked off to the point where like, my face is turning red.

I'm not speaking with my hands yet, but I'm sitting there, my face turning red. And it's like I've told you for the 49 time. And then I can sit here and you think about that plank in my own night or that speck in my own eye. It's like how many times has God looked at me and said, I told you that, and you think 49 times a lot?

I told you 1,549 times not to do something. You still do it. You wanna know what, I told you 1,797 times not to curse. I've told you 5 billion times not to drink. I told you 4,000 times to sit there and do A through Z and we still don't do it. Right? Yet, guess what? God still loves us. He's still patient with us.

He doesn't block us off. He doesn't get angry. He doesn't, I mean, He does get angry at us, but what I'm trying to sit there and say is He is patient and He is willing to sit there and give us a second, third, fourth thousandth chance. Yet with our own kids who he made in His image, of our dna, we don't even wanna give him 40 chances yet, God's willing to give us a million.

Kaila: And the other thing too with God, though is he loves us and he is gonna continue to give us chances over and over, but he doesn't say there are no consequences. So there are also still consequences for our actions. And that's I think where discipline comes in. And you have to provide corrective consequences and appropriate consequences that kind of match, not only match the crime, but are going to correct the behavior.

So this was one of the things we kind of sat down, talked about, like, okay, well if this child of ours is having trouble over sleeping, and isn't getting enough sleep, how do we correct that? So what consequences, quote unquote, consequences are we going to put in place that are going to help correct the behavior?

So if that's the issue, then the consequence is going to be, well, you're turning in your phone at a certain time at night, because that way it's not a distraction. And we will wake you up every morning at a certain time. So now there's no more luxury of getting to sleep in or setting your own alarm. If you can't do those things on your own, then we will help you do that.

And so I think also, discipline, think of your consequences as discipling teaching your children that corrective behavior of this isn't working, this isn't the right way. So hey, this is a consequence and it's probably not what you wanted and it's probably not gonna be fun, but it's gonna help correct the behavior of the problem that we have.

Bruce: I fully agree with that. You have to sit there and show them the steps that you wanted to see, or in any areas that you wanna see growth. You have to be willing to sit there and show them the steps. It's no different than you teaching a math class or teaching the kid how to read. You have to go sit there and go through the baby steps first in order to see larger steps made down the road.

Kaila: And then the last part too is you have to know when to pick your battles. Because with our kids, they are, again, if they are lost to their senses, as the verse said. Right? And so they're blind. They're living the life blind. Then not everything is going to be the way that we see it, because we see it from a different perspective.

And again, they're figuring things out. So, Do you think that your kids wants to hear you constantly ragging and nagging about all the things that they're not doing right, or not doing this, or they should be doing that? And there's a reason why Colossians 3:21 and says, "Fathers do not aggravate your children, or they'll become discouraged."

We also need to, when we're parenting them and when we're guiding them, and we're disciplining them, making sure do not aggravate them. Don't push them over their limits. If we're getting angry and we're yelling at them and then we're saying things that maybe that's belittling them, making them feel discouraged.

"I'm never gonna get it. They're just always mad at me. I can't do anything right."

We need to be able to correct them in a way that gives them that hope. That's why it also said, be kind. We need to teach them. There needs to be, yes, there are these consequences, but it's for your own good. We're showing you a different way.

This is what God says. So, I think it's also important that we make sure we pick our battles. What is worth fighting for? And that goes back to, well, what would Jesus fight for? What is breaking his heart? Is it something that your kid is doing? Is it breaking Jesus' heart?

Is it hurting him or is it hurting you? Is it just something that's offending you and it's a you problem and you need to handle differently? Or is this something where no, that would offend Jesus And so I'm gonna correct your behavior because I know that that's not what Jesus wants for you, and that's not what Jesus wants for your life because his Bible, the scripture tells me so. It's right there in His word.

He tells us how he expects us to live. So I think that that's also important when we're disciplining our kids or when we wanna get angry. Well, is this worth getting angry over? Is this worth correcting?

Bruce: So, so true. And at the end of the day, we can do one or two things right? We can either sit there and push our kids closer to Christ, or we can sit there and push 'em farther away and day and day out, it's up to us as parents. It's not easy, and I'm the first one to sit here and say, it's not easy to do, but the way in which we act and the way in which we respond to things plays a big part in how our kids develop as human being.

Kaila: So if you're listening to this podcast and maybe this really touched home for you. You are sitting there reflecting on your own anger issues or the way that you respond to the kids.

Or maybe the way you're responding and they're not reacting. Maybe you don't have appropriate consequences and your discipline isn't lining up and you're still having behavior problems. These are things that Bruce and I, we haven't totally figured it out. But if we're even just a couple steps ahead of where you are at, we would love to get together with you.

Talk through that with you. You can connect with us through our website. It's www.growingpaynes That's like our last name, P A Y N E S .org. On our website, you can also find links to the podcast, the women's Blog, and ways to connect with us.

Bruce: Absolutely. And thank you for those of you who have partnered with us with financial donations as well. It's been awesome to see those come in. If you feel that on your heart to do so, go right ahead and do so. If not, no worries.

I'm gonna sit here and end in a word of prayer. So here we go.

Dear Heavenly Father, thank you for the chances to come sit here and talk about you and your love and the grace and mercy that you've shown us as human beings.

Lord, thank you for that grace and mercy. So often we do not deserve it. Even if it's the 49th time, Lord, there's so many times where you tell us not to do something, we do it anyways. Yet you still love us and you still show us what it is you want us to do correct, Lord. I pray that as we parenting our own kids, that we can show this same grace, mercy, the same love that you show us Lord.

I pray that you be with parents who are struggling right now, who are either unequally yoked and, and are not too sure how they're supposed to be raising their kid, or they might be having spouses who oppose them. I pray that you can be with them, Lord, and that they can come and and learn what it means to be the child of God, a themselves, but B, how to show that love to their own kids, to o Lord.

I pray that you can be with our friends and family who are going through it, the thick of it right now. Lord, we've had family members pass away. We've had people in and out of the hospital. We've had people healed, some other variety of things going on. Lord, just thank you for your love and graciousness during these times in life.

Lord, I pray that you can be with our kids as they move forward, Lord, hopefully that they see the light of God in Kaila and I and all that we say and do, and let them just glorify you and be lights until the kingdom of God tomorrow at school. We just pray in your name, Lord. Amen.

Kaila: Amen.