I grew up in a loving and good family, but a lot of anger was expressed by one member of the family. Being around yelling and anger was a frequent occurrence in my experience. As a teenager, I began to realize that I was also expressing anger, mostly at home, and that I was hurting the very people I loved the most. I did not want to hurt anyone, and I knew that it was wrong and that I needed to stop.

My desire was to stop yelling. And Mary Baker Eddy writes in Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, “Desire is prayer; and no loss can occur from trusting God with our desires, that they may be moulded and exalted before they take form in words and in deeds” (p. 1). I asked God to help me stop having angry outbursts and trusted that God, divine Love, would show me how to do this. And He did! 

Soon I began to recognize anger at its onset—to recognize the point at which angry feelings were beginning to build up. And instead of releasing the anger by yelling, I was able to arrest it, knowing that it was not right because it was not of God and that I did not need or want to express it. After some time, I stopped yelling and even being angry about many things.