What Are You Angry About?

This morning, I got really angry. My husband and I are going through a season of massive change and uncertainty. One thing we’re doing is this: Quitting our secure jobs and selling a home we love and moving to a different town. (I guess that’s three things.) We’re also waiting to find out if our third (and likely final) fertility treatment has worked. In short: Just like most people in the world right now, we’re carrying a pretty heavy load of Unknown.

So this morning, I was writing in my journal about this Unknown Season and I was praying this prayer: “God,” I wrote, “I think a lot of us just need some good news today.” Some good news. It felt a bit like a selfish prayer (I have an abundance of goodness, even in this hard time) but I went ahead and prayed it anyway because I also think God wants us to be honest with Him. Afterwards, I headed the kitchen to help my husband finish cleaning things up for a house showing that was happening in about 30 minutes. (If you’ve ever sold a house you know this routine: Your realtor tells you that a potential buyer is coming. You clean your house in a way that it’s never been cleaned while you’ve been living there. You get out and hope the buyer bites. Repeat. On the plus side, your house is very clean and organized most of the time.) Here’s what happened that made my anger, that must have been pretty near the surface, spill over: I picked up the stove top espresso maker, not knowing it was hot or full of coffee, and promptly dropped it, spilling steaming brown liquid all over the floor, the cabinets, the stove, inside drawers, you name it. Coffee everywhere. Right after we’d finished cleaning. Right before the realtor was due to arrive. God, I thought as I went to get a towel to clean up, this is sort of the opposite of good news.

I am not someone who angers easily, but I feel like when I do get angry, I get really angry. (Maybe a therapist would say this is because I don’t get angry enough; it builds up inside of me and then overflows.) I don’t yell or scream or physically hurt people when I get angry. I have enough self-control to know when to take a deep breath and walk away, but I do sometimes feel like I struggle with anger. Not because I’m angry a lot, but because my anger always makes me feel like I’m disappointing God. I worry that my anger makes me seem ungrateful, or spoiled, or selfish. Maybe it does. Sometimes it does. But does that fix the problem? Does feeling guilt over getting angry ever make the anger go away? No. It just adds another layer of emotional confusion to the mix. It just makes things more murky.

I have heard that anger can be a clarifying force. That if you’re not sure how you feel about a thing, when your anger flares up, you can be pretty sure that something needs to change, or be talked through, or ended altogether. In a way, this makes sense: If anger can show us what’s wrong for us, then we can more easily see what’s right.

This is only one type of anger, though. I think there’s another, more difficult type. Maybe I’ll call this “Life Anger.”

Life Anger is the kind of anger that you don’t really want to admit to because it smells faintly (and sometimes pungently) of a “poor me” attitude. It’s the type of anger that begins to seep into our veins when one too many things seem to have gone wrong, or aren’t happening easily, or haven’t gone exactly (or at all) how we’d expected them to go. These things build up over time, and try as we might to practice gratitude—however earnestly and honestly—we can’t escape this growing frustration with the way our life is playing out.

This is the type of anger that I worry God doesn’t approve of. And this was the type of anger that boiled over in me this morning when I spilled coffee all over the clean kitchen I’d worked so hard to prepare so that our house might sell and we’d be able to move to the new town more easily and like a key fitting into a lock this door to our future would open and we’d breeze right on through.

Only, we’re not breezing on through right now. Things aren’t impossible, but they’re certainly challenging, and I’m ready for some good news. I think maybe we all are.

Unfortunately, I don’t have a clear answer for you. I’m not sure I can tell you that God doesn’t mind our anger. He might. What I can say is this: I do think that God wants us to be who we are before Him. Like I said earlier, I’m trying to be more honest with God, and whether I like it or not, my anger is a part of that honesty.

I have an exercise for you, if you’d like one: I think you should set a timer for 5-10 minutes, and write down everything that makes you angry. Everything. Big or small. That co-worker said something judgmental to you? Write it down. You still haven’t heard back from that job interview? Write it down. You don’t get to have a graduation ceremony? Your child refuses to do their homework? You thought you’d be married or a mother or a published author or more successful by now? You’re going through a divorce? You’re battling cancer? Any of it. If it’s making you angry because you just don’t understand why it’s happening when you’ve been trying your best, write it down. When you’re finished, tear up the list, take a deep breath, and move on to the next thing in your day. This won’t fix everything, I’m afraid, but it might give you a small measure of peace or relief that will help you continue through the next hour, or day, or week.

Not all problems are created equal. This is true. Some suffering is greater than others. It is important to have perspective. It is important to think of others. It is also okay to admit to your own anger, pain, and heartbreak, and to do so without guilt. You can be self-compassionate and have compassion for others at the same time. In fact, honoring your own pain will give you the softness and strength to honor another’s pain. Isn’t that the whole, “put on your own oxygen mask first” analogy?

As I write this, I’m not angry anymore. The tantrum that was triggered by spilled coffee this morning has subsided. Does this mean that my Life Anger is no more? Unfortunately not. It will probably emerge again at some point, and I’ll do my best to deal with it, only that time, maybe I’ll do something different: I’ll simply let it be. I’ll say: God, I am angry. And I’ll hope that He’s silently saying, Okay.

Thanks for reading.

Beth