What is driving me?

I behaved very badly tonight with my husband...I became very frustrated with him because, according to me, he procrastinated on something that I thought was very important and needed to be dealt with much more quickly...I tried to bully him with my words.  I tried to railroad him into thinking like me.  I tried to convince him that my way of thinking was right and I tried to make him feel bad for the way he was doing it in order to get him to do it my way....Yikes!  This is not grace...this is called intimidation. 

"The good man brings good things out of the good stored up in his heart, and the evil man brings evil things out of the evil stored up in his heart.  For out of the overflow of his heart his mouth speaks."  Luke 6:45

Wow!  Talk about convicting!  Where is this yuck coming from in me...from my heart!  What is driving me?  Where is this stuff coming from?  I know it's coming from my heart, as the scripture says, but why is it coming?  What is it that is driving me to act like this, impatient with a high level of frustration, easily irritated, disrespectful, controlling, intimidating, unloving, unkind, and ungracious?  Is it fear?  Anger?  Feeling vulnerable?  Feeling scared?  Why am I acting this way? 

This is no easy question with no easy answers, but yet very important to ask nonetheless.  Sometimes I feel like I go in circles, chasing my tail with the questions that have no definitive answers and possible answers with really no certainty that I have hit the nail on the head. 

After this very negative interchange with my husband, I felt like a failure all the while that was how I was making him feel as well.  No one wins.  As I said to him, "It seems that it is only when I really get mad that something gets done about the issue at hand."  He replied..."It gets done this time, but I don't respect you in the process."  That was a punch in the gut!  I did it again, I said to myself, I ruined everything.  That's when I get myself in so much trouble, when I get so frustrated I feel like a pressure gasket that inevitably is going to blow...and the results are never very good.  Trust and respect go way down on the meter and the ramifications are incalculable.  Do I feel better because I let  him have it?  Not hardly!  At the time it feels like the pressure valve is better, but it leaves me feeling like a heel, him feeling like a failure, and the relationship in a state of shock.  No one wins. 

But, how do I handle my off the charts frustration...I don't know, I am often at a loss.  Relationships are not a black and white issue and I have a hard time living in the gray.  I wish it was, you do this and this will happen (which is exactly what happens, but not in the way I would like).  These are often questions without answers except for by the spirit.  I was just reminded of the verse that says in Galatians, "Walk in the spirit and you will not fulfill the lusts of the flesh."  What are the lusts in this situation?  Letting him have it, giving him what I think he deserves for his apparent lack of responsibility or procrastination.  If I had prayed and asked the Lord what my response should've been, I dare say my approach would have been much different and so to the results.  I obviously was not walking in the spirit and I did fulfill the lust of my flesh at that moment.  How would've the spirit responded?  With truth.  With kindness.  With grace.  With patience.  Trusting that God would work through this situation and would speak to my husband where I am unable to. 

Thankfully God is gracious (unlike me) and His mercies are new every morning.  I will ask God for his forgiveness and help and ask my husband to forgive me as well.  I didn't do  it right, but I have learned after over five years of marriage and I am getting it right more often than when we started this lifelong journey (Both God and my husband).  "After all it's all about love"...as Steven Curtis Chapman would sing...