Triggers: Exchanging Parents’ Angry Reactions for Gentle Biblical Responses

 As a young mom, I had a lot of anger piled up inside me. So consumed by my anger, I often used my young daughter as a verbal punching bag. My anger triggers normally showed up in the morning when I was getting myself ready for work, and her ready for daycare and eventually, school. I behaved like a drill sergeant, barking out orders and expecting perfection that even the best soldier would fall short of. Day after day, my angry demands would bring tears to my little girl’s eyes and crush her spirit in the process.

This was a picture of my parenting years ago, before Jesus transformed my heart and my life. Oh how I long to go back in time and hug the little girl tight and erase all the unkind words and unrealistic demands I made. But I can’t. Fortunately, my season of anger is overshadowed by God’s grace, and we have had thousands of good mornings to make up for the hundreds of bad mornings. But I still cry when I think about those mad mornings.

I realize now I was operating out of an empty tank. I had nothing filling my heart and I was living off the fumes of my anger. Until Jesus transformed my heart, anger was the overflow from which I parented.

Can you relate to this first picture of motherhood? I want to tell you about a brand new book called “Triggers: Exchanging Parents’ Angry Reactions for Gentle Biblical Responses” by Amber Lia and Wendy Speake. In “Triggers”, Amber and Wendy address a myriad of triggers while encouraging and equipping parents to respond to those triggers Biblically and with gentleness, instead of explosive and spirit crushing responses.

“Triggers” releases TODAY! Click HERE to order your paperback copy, HERE for the Kindle version, and HERE for the PDF version.