I tell this with permission

We've all experienced a moment of anger that for some reason leaves us "so angry we can't see straight". My sweet husband had one of those yesterday at church. He isn't a big breakfast eater so he never takes the time to fill the tummy before our 9:00 a.m. service and by the time noon rolls around he is so hungry that even the cheerios scattered through out the chapel on the floor look appetizing. For some reason the kids were taking their sweet time coming to the foyer and he was getting weaker by the moment. I told him to walk home and I'd wait for the kids but he was being particularly stubborn and decided to stand there and fume silently as the halls began to empty out and there was no sign of the two oldest. You'd have to know that my husband considers it a successful church meeting if nobody talks to him and he is able to go unnoticed in Elder's Quorum. He can't understand that Bailey and her little friends have so much to say that they need more than 30 seconds to babble on and on about their latest crush and what their plans are for the week. Since he has been married forever he can't remember needing to troll the halls in search of a new girl to captivate with a smile. I was able to find Bailey after about 10 minutes and decided that Zach could find his way home when he was finally done flirting with whoever was in the hall. I could hear my husbands tummy growling and his brow was furrowed with the intensity of a hunter who has his prey in sight and is ready to pounce. He walked gruffly out the front doors, his books in hand and rounded the corner to the car. In his haste he decided to cut across the grass and save himself the additional 10 seconds he would have spent taking the cement path. The kids and I were following approximately six feet behind when all of a sudden we saw him trip, his foot had caught on an imaginary obstacle and in slow motion I saw him stumble, recover, stumble again and then his book (his precious programming book not his scriptures) went flying through the air coming unbound as pages filled with numbers and strange combinations of letters detached from their cover and floated through the sky. His phone went flying from his pocket and with the grunt of a man no longer in his 20's he hit the ground and rolled. No naughty words found their way from his mouth but the scowl only became more exaggerated as his cold hearted wife started to laugh. I laughed and laughed and tried with all my might to get an "are you ok" out in between fits of hysteria. The girls were much better, they were able to express their concern in more appropriate ways and Jacob just watched with a "dang, I do that a lot" kind of look on his face. He pulled himself from the concrete and gathered his supplies and tossed a dirty look in my direction and I tried even harder to contain myself. After a somewhat silent walk to the car he grumbled "I don't know how that happened, there must be some crack or something". with all the compassion I could muster I said simply, "you were blind with anger honey, perhaps it is God's way of telling you to chill". He wasn't pleased and I giggled for the next 20 minutes. After some time to rebind his book and to fill his tummy he came to the front room where the rest of us had gathered and said, "it was kind of funny, I guess". We all learned a valuable lesson. Anger can have a true physical effect on your body and if you aren't late after church you might get to catch dad do some "totally awesome" tricks.