I am carrying around a bunch of accumulated anger, my friends. Some of it is about national issues that might be making you mad as well; some of it is about very specific and painful stuff that's been going on in our family over the last six-ish months. I am writing a letter in connection with one of the most frustrating pieces of that stuff, and the longer I work on it the more enraged it sounds. There's a part in which I have described the reader's anticipated response to my chief complaint with the phrase "insert self-serving and nonsensical mouth-noises here" -- because I would like to be perfectly clear that I have listened to all the yammering I care to hear. It deploys the word "loathsome" with more fervor than I have ever applied to it before. I will need to dial it back before I can send it off.
But in many spheres I am feeling UP.TO.HERE with nonsense. Tonight I was talking to Stella about some unkindness she's been experiencing at school and I said, "That story makes me want to spray that kid in the face with a Super Soaker! I wish I could just walk up to him and say, 'Hi, I'm Stella's mom. Do better.' as I unload the entire reservoir." She laughed, because she knows I am never going to do that. And I laughed at myself, saying, "Oh, yes, that's definitely the remedy for unkindness. Way to set an example!" But do you know, I can still imagine the heft of that pretend Super Soaker in my hands.
The pastor of the evangelical church I attended in college said something once that I have never forgotten: he said "forgiveness is the DRAIN in a Christian life." He talked about how gross and unusable a kitchen sink becomes when the drains are clogged. When we hold on to hurts and anger, we back up the flow of grace. We cannot allow living water to move through us if we are nursing our injuries.
I am put together, temperamentally, as a person who reflects on past events. This tendency to relive things that have happened to me does not make it easier for me to move past them. This is a season, in both my citizen-life and my mom-life, when anger is appropriate. It's the balance that gets me, though. Part of the question is practical: if I am rudely dismissive to my correspondent, it's less likely that she will make the (reasonable. so reasonable) decision I am demanding she make. But the bigger piece of it is ethical. I'm always skeptical when Christians say "Well, Jesus flipped tables!" Not being the sinless Son of God, I am less well equipped to express anger without straying into self-indulgence.
I don't know what to do with all this anger, is what I'm saying. I don't like it -- that's another thing I'm saying. I will not be Super-Soaking any fifth-graders, but my rage-ometer is spiking into the red zone on a regular basis. Tell me it's not just me.
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