“Were you angry with God over the cancer?” the radio host pressed.
Silence hung in the air.
Blurt. That’s what I longed to do. Blurt about how much I wanted to be angry, about how anger would have been so freeing and refreshing.
When properly expressed, anger is a gift. A signal that something is off-kilter. Healthy anger can herald justice, cleans the static from a relationship, create space for honest dialogue.
It’s possible to get the best of anger rather than let anger get the best of us.
Yet I’m weak when it comes to healthy anger. Any expresses of anger are still childlike, more like a tantrum than a burning, well-honed expression of grief.
Anger can help us move us forward toward healing and alert us the raw areas of our soul that require salve.
Yet anger isn’t what I felt toward God.
I wish I had. That would have been the right answer to the radio host’s question that day.
Instead, I felt something else: compliant.
This wasn’t my first rodeo with loss, affliction, or suffering. Maybe I’d worked through the why questions over the previous battlefields I’ve stood on. Loss of loved ones. Friends taking their own lives. Embezzlement. Mysterious illnesses. If you’ve read my books, you know, there’s much more.
Maybe I am still in shock. Maybe I am still too close to the treatment. Maybe the anger will come.
Or maybe trust is beginning to take deeper root in my life.
Trust believes the best, looks for the best, hopes for the best.
Maybe, even in this, God wants to unfold His very best. Such hope gives me the strength to continue fighting back with joy.
Perhaps one day I’ll get mad. Throw my fists in the air. Shoot a pellet gun at an unsuspecting bunny. (Have I mentioned we have a serious bunny problem? One of our neighbors is calling for the commencement of bunnygeddon.)
Sure, I’d love an hour with God to shout and demand with a mottled face that he answer my runaway train of questions. Lately, though, He seems rather quiet on the subjects I want to talk about and rather wordy on topics I’ve never considered.
Deeper issues of the heart.
Maybe I’m asking what and why too early. Maybe it’s not time yet.
Maybe you’re asking what and why too early. Maybe it’s not time yet.
Until then I’m still waiting. Learning to embrace the unknowing. The mystery.
How do you express and manage your anger with God?
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