I should have published the usual Sunday Sidebar yesterday, but chose to get up and move instead, followed by getting under the covers and hiding from the world for the rest of the day. Sunday Sidebar’s are for me- they pertain to grief and the journey back to life- but they are directed from whatever emotions are sitting on my heart at the time. Raw. Unedited. And I didn’t have much good to say yesterday. My prayer: God I know you are real, I know I am made in your image, I understand how you see me, I think. But today I have anger in my heart and I don’t know what to do with it.
People say give it to God a lot. What exactly does that mean? Hand it over mentally? Ask him to take it? Will it into his hands? All of the options sound like the promises of terot card readings and crystal balls. What if my anger is not only at myself, but a little at God? There is shame that comes with that feeling. God, I’m a little angry with you. Do you want to take that? I know he doesn’t deserve it. How dare I even ask. But David did. And God sure loved him.
“O Lord, how long will you forget me? Forever? How long will you look hte other way?” Psalm 13:1
“How long must I struggle with anguish in my soul, with sorrow in my hear every day?” Psalm 13:2
So, I don’t know what people intend when they say give it to God. Mostly, because it implies he will take it away. And that is not typically the case. He will, however, join you and channel your passion for something better. Not necessarily better than what you lost, but better than your current bed of anger. C.S. Lewis said he sat with anger long enough until she told him it was grief. Something like that, anyway. The point is that anger comes with grief. And it is the last to leave. Especially when we admit there is a God big enough to save people, marriages, relationships, entire populations. And yet, here we sit doing everything and giving everything inside us to our pursuit of him with nothing but what seems like a new plan. I am angry that it is any plan other than the one I thought he blessed me with before. I’m angry it can’t be put back together. But all he wants is for me to share that anger with him. To allow him to show me where that comes from and what I can do with it.
Tomorrow will come and his mercies will be new. Sometimes you have to hide under the covers until the morning comes. And start again. One. Step. At. A. Time.
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