The Path to Forgiveness – Through the Anger

This started because I got sick last fall. Literally. And if our bodies’ illnesses reflect our emotional states and/or needs, then it became readily apparent to me that I was hanging onto stuff that I need to let go of. With me, it’s easy to figure that part out. I’m angry. I’m enraged, fed up, you name it.

So why write about being angry here? Well, I suspect I’m not the only person on this planet who is dealing with anger issues, even if we’re reluctant to admit it. Most women I know are. We’re trained to be nice and being angry is not nice. Which gives a lot of us tremendous incentive to hold onto and suppress our anger until it turns inward on us and becomes depression.

Also, as I began to sort out the issue of anger (not necessarily what’s making me angry), it occurred to me that one of the healthiest ways to get past the anger is to forgive. But how many of us really know how to forgive someone? We know how to say the words, but it doesn’t always play out in our lives. We are freshly wounded again. We don’t believe it’s possible. I’ve heard and read all kinds of different things. So, maybe, if I share my own struggle as I learn to forgive, really forgive, then maybe we can struggle along together. Maybe we can build each other up, even when we’re so angry, we’d love to do some serious tearing down.

And that’s kind of where I’m at right now. There is a whole boatload of people in my life right now that I’d just love to slap around. Yeah, I know the standard advice is to keep those people out of my life. Well, that’s not going to work here. Some of them I’m related to, and they’re not so bad that I’d want to take that drastic a step, at least, not yet. A lot of them I have no direct relationship with – as in they are the masses of freaking idiots out there whose combined stupidity is conspiring to mess me and mine up royally. You know, self-righteous, knee-jerk reactionaries (liberal or conservative – they come in both flavors); tech support people; doctors who can’t take their noses out of their formularies long enough to see me as a whole human being and understand that I don’t always conform to their medical cookbooks. (Seriously, three months of telling them I don’t react well to psyllium and they kept telling me to take it.)

Actually, it’s not the stuff that I can do something about that tends to get me all riled. It’s the stuff I’m powerless against.

And here’s the thing that makes forgiveness so insanely hard. You have to deal with the anger, first. You can’t gloss over it. You can’t pretend that whatever didn’t hurt. You have to stare it in the eye and admit you’re mad.

The problem is, I do not believe that in our culture, we have any good ways to deal with this most unpleasant of emotions. Ranting doesn’t work. Hurting other people back doesn’t work – trust me, I’ve tried that one. Brooding about it doesn’t help. It doesn’t really matter how many times I admit I’m angry, there has to be something I can do with this boiling up of emotions.

In fact, maybe it’s not letting go of the anger that I need to do. Maybe I need to find a way to let it fuel something good, something Holy. Oh, by the way, I will be coming at this from my perspective and a Catholic and a Christian, or someone who is trying to live out those ideals. That does not mean that I believe that’s the only perspective, just that it’s mine and that I find a great deal to appreciate in this tradition. Not necessarily in the way a lot of folks practice it, but that’s yet another thing that I am angry about and powerless to fix.

Uh, back to the problem of anger. I hope this helps in some small way. As it happens, I can only write what is in my heart. I want good to happen. And I want to find a healthy, purpose-filled way to move through this nonsense, forgive the jerks, and focus on building up my fellows.