Who me? I'm not angry!

Anger, is apparently a pretty normal part of the grief process for most people. Of course, being a mild mannered, gentle person, pleasant to everyone, I do not easily identify with the emotion of anger or even recognize its existence. Other people may get angry: I just get sad. But grief literature speaks frequently of the presence of anger in grief. Of course, since I am different than other people, I don’t have to experience EVERY emotion that OTHER people experience to be going through a healthy grieving process…

Oh sure, occasionally I’ll slam something down on the table or throw something across the room but I don’t really get angry. Sure, on occasion I am sarcastic (like I am right now) but that is not anger, is it? Sometimes I'll make an "observation" or two to myself, like the other day when I was looking at Jackie’s table in my home office and I observed, “all I have left of Jackie is a d_ _ _ table!”. And while I am at it, “this being alone in the house sure is a lot of fun!”

But not me, I don’t deal with anger. Other people do. Of course, I have told God several times what I think of how this past summer unfolded and what happened to Jackie’s body and that I felt cheated out of any conversation with her virtually the entire summer. But I’m not really angry, I’m just, expressing my honest feelings --- you know, like in the Psalms of David, when he tells God how he feels about things. Oh, you say David was angry and frustrated sometimes? Hmm...

Grief reveals everything that is in you. One of the things it is revealing is my sense of being a victim – again. It’s revealing that I feel I deserve punishment. It’s revealing that I have always had anger but instead of expressing it outwardly, I usually turn it inward – on myself or I express it sideways through sarcasm or a muttered curse word or slamming something a little extra hard.

I am slowly accepting the fact that anger is also a part of my makeup and is part of my grief and that it is okay to slowly let it out without hurting others or becoming bitter. God can handle it and God can heal and God can change my thinking. God is wanting to use this present moment of grief in my life to reveal, to cleanse and to heal me.

Lord, I don’t want to waste my grief. The price was too high not to grow through this and become all you want me to be. I know I have more growing to do before it’s my turn to go home.

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"BE ANGRY, AND yet DO NOT SIN; do not let the sun go down on your anger" (Ephesians 4:26 NASB).

"A fool gives full vent to his anger, but a wise man keeps himself under control" (29:11).

"But when I was silent and still, not even saying anything good, my anguish increased. My heart grew hot within me, and as I meditated, the fire burned" (Psalm 39:2-3).