We have been going through a tough season. For me, my season of crazy hasn’t just been from COVID, but a myriad of things. I wanted to share, but wasn’t ready to until now. I plan to post a few things I have written over the past few months that I kept tucked away. I hope that as I share my experiences with grief and loss and anger and bitterness and where-are-you-God that someone else can relate and know they are not alone.
I am in a season of upheaval.
In the time span of a month and a half, we left our church, our home and all our close friends. We pulled our kids from school, packed up an entire house, had a huge garage sale and said lots of good-byes.
My heart aches writing this.
For most of this season I have been mad. Anger was the main emotion that bubbled under the surface, ready to be lashed out, sadly, at the people who deserved it the least, my family. I only cried a few tears the night I found out we were leaving and once in a while from a kindness someone showed me. But from that point on, instead of being emotional, I was stoic. I tried to express sadness when someone wanted to talk and grieve, but my face couldn’t quite match the emotion I was trying to will it to do.
I wanted to cry. I wanted to allow myself to feel, to feel something more deep the anger that was building a wall around my heart. My friends told me it was okay to feel anger. Anger was part of grief. And I was going through the grieving process.
Knowing that I am an Enneagram Seven, I typically avoid negative feelings. Anger is a negative emotion to me. It’s something that drives my urge to change and plan and make something better. At least with tears and sadness, I experience a catharsis of some sort, purging the pent up emotions and feeling a little relief from their weight.
But anger is a different beast. It reminds me of a TV show:
One day when I was at Little Caesar’s grabbing a hot and ready pizza, when a weird show came on the TV in the restaurant. The sound was muted, but here’s what I saw: everything was in black and white, except this neon green goo. Whether it was an ice cream cone, a drink, a mysterious blob lurking towards someone…whatever it was, once a person ingested or touched it, they would contort in pain and you could see the neon green glow in their veins until their eyes glowed that same eerie color. Then they started to walk like zombies, arms straight out in front of them, haphazardly marching towards other people with necks crooked, ready to infect other normal people–and I guess eat their brains, but thankfully they didn’t show that part.
I think anger is like that green goo. Whatever way it comes to you: whether you purposefully ingest it or something external creeps up and hurts you, it’s like a virus. And once I swallowed the bitter green goo myself, it worked its way to the tenderest parts of my heart. I became like a zombie, except the whole eating brains part. Compared to my normal self, I felt stoic, blank, empty. I just haphazardly marched through that month and a half of upheaval, doing whatever task was the most urgent, unaware sometimes of those around me.
I acted in ways I am not proud of. I would think bitter thoughts of all the things I wanted to say to anyone who had hurt me. I would lash out at my kids for needing my attention when I had a house to pack and lots of loose ends to tie up. I dropped the ball on several things I had committed to because I just didn’t have the desire to fulfill promises I wasn’t going to be around to keep. And I let the anger become bitterness. And the bitterness festered long enough to become resentment.
A resentful heart is an ugly thing. The soft, sensitive parts of me hid deep down inside and I wore my resentment armor. My armor protected me from the aches of leaving women who had loved and shaped me the past three years, who loved my children as their own, and who had carried me through some of my own dark seasons by showing me hospitality and love and kindness in ways only experienced by sharing life together.
The armor protected me from the reality and sadness that hope for reconciliation was lost.
The armor protected me from feeling utterly distraught by the thought of my girls leaving the only church family they’ve really ever known, the friends they have known since they were babies and the safety of living in a small community who cared for them. (As I write this, tears are hovering in my eyes. The fact that I couldn’t protect my girls from feeling this loss and grief hurts the most of all.)
This confessional post is not just for you to read, but also as a reminder for me. The anger and bitterness and resentment did not come on overnight, at the announcement of bad news, or because of a slight against me. This anger seed was planted a while ago.
I watered that seed with every piece of frustration and unforgiveness I could. The worst part is I knew better. I knew that I was slowly, but surely headed down a road that would be hard to turn back from.
I’m not in a place to end this post with a happy ending. I am still working through letting myself feel all. the. emotions. I am still wrestling with apathy and trying to rebuild my relationship with Jesus. However, I now have words to put to my feelings. I’m no longer that zombie, numb and unaware. But that’s a post for another day.
Have you ever wrestled with anger and faith and bitterness?
House of Dreams 