Losing Your Right to Anger

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by Bethany Beebe

It is amazing how God can give you peace in times when you don’t want it, in times when you feel you have the right to be upset, angry, sad, miserable. It is in those moments when He says, “Here, have some of this, it will make you feel better.” But the truth is we really don’t want to feel better, we want to feel upset, angry, sad, miserable. I went through something during which, if I had the right to be upset, that would have been the time.

It was about three years ago. (I can’t believe it has been that long.) I was living in Atlanta, Georgia with my parents. We finally found a place my mom liked. This was the sixth place we had lived in from the time we moved there. We had only been in Atlanta for a year and a half, perhaps almost two years. Our moving wasn’t because my mom didn’t like the places we’d lived; it was for many other reasons that I may write about in another blog This place my mom really liked; in fact, it was the only place she liked. There were only four apartments, two on the top, and two on the bottom. All had doors that led to the outside. We had no hallways or elevators, but a nice stairway with a small porch. Ours was on the second floor.

One night I was writing on a book idea I had, and my mom was sewing something for a Christmas present. I was finishing up a page when I smelled burning trash. I asked my mom if she was cooking something and had left it on the stove. She had no idea what I was talking about and said she couldn’t smell anything and hadn’t cooked anything since dinner, but thanks for thinking it smelled like trash. That is when we heard the knock on our door. It was late at night, almost too late for a visitor, but my dad was the maintenance man for the apartment complex, and our pastor lived in the next building over, so we didn’t think too much about why someone would be at our door.

It was our neighbor. Odd, but not a big deal until he asked my dad for a fire-extinguisher. The man was so calm that we didn’t really think about why he needed one. We searched our place, knowing we had one but not remembering where it was. My dad went downstairs to a friend of ours to get a fire-extinguisher while we kept looking for ours. When he came back he told us to put some shoes on and wait outside, just for safety.

Well, I still needed to save my story because I was up to about sixty pages, and my mom wanted to make sure that she put the important papers in something safe. So I was just sitting at the computer watching the little thing on the screen tell me all of it was saved to a disk. My dad ran in and told us to leave now! It had gone from not a big deal to get out! I grabbed my disk and set it on the TV that my dad was pushing down the hall as far away from our neighbors’ place as he could. We had just gotten this beautiful, 62″, projection screen, full surround sound, five disk playing piece of equipment. But the smoke was getting too strong, so we had to leave it in the hall.

My mom and I walked out of the apartment, still not thinking it was all that bad; I mean, the neighbor sounded so calm. When we saw the smoke coming from his home, was when it hit me. This was a real fire. But still I was thinking that it would be put out before it reached us, (although we shared a wall), and the man asked for a fire-extinguisher, not a hose, so how bad could it be?

As my dad ran to the two bottom apartments telling them to get out, my mom sat on our pastor’s porch across the parking lot and watched as we started to see flame emerge from the roof. For some reason I still had peace about what was happening. I thought for sure the firemen would put it out before it reached us. I even thought this as I saw smoke coming our of the roof by my bed room. I kept this thought in my head until I saw a fireman kick open our door. In an instant, the thought of our stuff being okay was gone. When he kicked open that door, all I saw were flames. The bright reds and oranges silhouetted that fireman to where he was just a black form.

I don’t think there are words to tell you what my heart felt like. It was as if your life was being eaten up and you can’t stop it. All the things that you love gone in a moment of red and orange. I wanted to look away but I couldn’t, I just kept thinking, “It’s not that bad, it can’t be that bad.” My mom didn’t know what to think, she was just laughing from sheer shock and horror. My dad, he just watched silently. We sat there as a family watching all the things we held dear to us being engulfed by flames. Yet even though I felt like I should cry or scream or feel something other then peace, I didn’t. I just knew God would take care of us. I mean, we were all still alive.

We looked on as the firemen gallantly fought to put the blaze out. Where we sat we could feel the heat on our faces. I had to cover mine from time to time because the heat was too much for me to take. It felt like a blow-dryer was on as high as it could go an inch from my face. My dad held my hand and had his arm around my mom and still said nothing.

An hour or two later, time was hard to guess because it seemed to not be working when this was happening, the fire was out. It took the firemen another half an hour to check to make sure it was completely out before they told us we could go in for a brief moment to grab some clothes or anything else we needed.

Finally we could see what had become of our lives. My dad walked in first, followed by my mom, then me. The smell was terrible, the carpet was soaked, and everything had a coat of black soot on it. It took us a moment to take it all in. All of our things were shoved underneath a tarp in the middle of the living room. The TV, our furniture, sewing machine, even my collection of porcelain dolls made it under there. It was too dark to see what the damage was to the stuff under the tarp, but the living room ceiling was partially gone. The kitchen was completely destroyed, the dining room was ash laden and all of our books and photo albums were beyond saving.

We made our way to our rooms, thankful to find that the fire was just in the front of the apartment. My room was untouched, except for the gaping hole above my bed from where the firemen had to pull down the ceiling to make sure there were no embers on the beams. But other than that it was all intact. It was the same with my parents’ room. We grabbed some clothes and left the apartment.

We stayed at my pastor’s house that night. But none of us slept well. Now that it was over was the time where my peace began to slip. I kept thinking I was smelling more smoke, and I was terrified that something else was on fire, or the firemen didn’t get everything. But there was a fear of what we would see in the morning. When I felt like I wasn’t going to be able to take it anymore, I found myself in a peace that I have never felt. All those things slipped away, and I fell asleep.

In the end we only lost our kitchen. The TV was saved, the sewing machine, my dolls, even our furniture, except for a burn on the love seat, was all saved. God had protected our stuff. Well, most of our stuff. It was hard, however, to see what kind of havoc a fire can cause. Just looking at the place would have been enough to cause some kind of emotion to erupt and come spewing out. But God had given us peace. There were times that it seemed like it was slipping away, but then it would come back stronger.

He watches out for us. He gives us peace in times that we need it the most, in times that we feel we have the right to be angry, or frustrated. But in the end those are really the times that we need the peace of Christ the most. Those are the times that we can stand back and see that the hand of God was on us, that He loved us so much He spared us from feeling things that we don’t need to feel.

I have yet to feel anything but peace about that night, though there are times when the smell of smoke will bring me right back to that scene. But, even when that happens, the peace is still there!

Bethany Beebe has worked with Christian WYSIWYG Filmworks in set production and prop-making.
She currently is working with Final Cut Pro, editing a DVD series.

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