Having a Heart in a Sometimes Heartless World
Scripture focus: Go ahead and be angry. You do well to be angry – but don’t use your anger as fuel for revenge. And don’t stay angry. Don’t go to bed angry. Don’t give the Devil that kind of foothold in your life. Ephesians 4:26-27 The Message
Once upon a time I tried to avoid dealing with the “F” word – forgiveness – by trying really hard to avoid anger. I decided that good Christians “turn the other cheek” and “lay down their lives for a friend.” Surely this meant that I wasn’t supposed to get angry – at all, about anything. As usual, my husband was the person who helped me move past this limiting view. One day a person who should have been a friend behaved more like an enemy. Pete witnessed this interchange. Later that evening, he asked me how I was feeling.
“Fine. Why do you ask?” Truthfully, I didn’t want to know why he was asking. But it seemed like the polite, good Christian thing to say.
“Well, I’m thinking about the incident this afternoon, and wondering how you feel about it.”
“I feel fine about it. I know this friend has had a tough time lately, if acting like this somehow helps her through this tough time – who am I to get in the way?”
“Could I ask you a question?” He looks hesitant, and I respond in kind.
“I guess…”
“If this same incident had happened to someone else, how would you have responded?”
Silence. What a terrible question! “Can I think about it and get back to you?”
“Sure,” he replied. I was hoping he’d forget. After all, this is a man who forgets other things – like where recyclables belong or where he left his wallet, keys and cell phone. But he remembers the important stuff of life, and a future conversation teaches me some important life lessons. It seems I had a propensity to advise others to acknowledge wrong-doing when it occurs, and proceed honestly to the next right step. Evidently, I wasn’t following my own advice! I had developed a very shame-bound response when others treated me unkindly. I tried to forgive and forget. And by all means possible – never, ever get angry! I had a rigid system of belief. And something needed to change. “The shame-bound family system is fixed in its form and highly resistant to change, even though change is a natural fact of life. This system is analogous to peanut brittle, with each person fixed in stereotyped, inflexible roles and relationships to one another…When change exerts enough force all at one moment upon a rigid system, it may break and splinter. The shame-bound system does not have good capacity to absorb very much stress and still retrain its integrity.” M. A. Fossum and M. J. Mason, Facing Shame: Families in Recovery, (New York, NY: WW Norton, 1986) p.19. I mistakenly read a few scriptures that, when taken out of context, reinforced my tendency to play the role of martyr – and it was not serving me or my family well. Learning how to acknowledge, appropriately identify and healthily express my anger was a key early step in recovering my life.
Recommended reading: Jeremiah 42 and 43 in the morning; Jeremiah 44 and 2 Timothy 2 in the evening
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