Living in the Storm: My anger does not intimadate God.

We have talked before how the grief process often times includes anger.  When I tell you that anger is not my typical M.O. I am not trying to say that my typical M.O. if more holy or "better-er" (as Lucy would say) than anger. 

Any who, last week I was cycling back through some angry moments.  Angry specifically with God.  I was able to verbalize this anger in a very safe place, with very safe people by my side.  And the beauty of being able to express this emotion is that God was in no way intimated, offended, or thrown for a loop by my anger with Him.  I was reminded on Sunday of the account in scripture when Lazarus has just died. Jesus is now coming to the house of Lazarus where his two sisters live, and Martha runs out to meet him, then she says, "Lord, if you would have been here Lazarus would not have died!"  We don't know what tone Martha used. She might have been pleading, she might have been crying, she might have been angry. I know that if my brother had just died, and I had sent a message to the Master and Healer to come quickly, and He delayed four days, I might have been a bit upset.  But notice Jesus' response. He does not scold Mary for her lack of unbelief.  He does not scold her for accusing Him. He does pull out the law and remind her of what it says. He does NOT tell her to get her act together and pull her boot straps up for the Kingdom... No, no. He does non of those Pharisaical things. He stops and  He weeps with her. The Creator of the world,  the Healer, the man who would just moments later raise Lazarus from the dead, wept for and with his friends.  Now, that is MY Jesus.  In my moments of intense anger last week, I knew that my response was not the correct response, but I was also in a safe place with my Savior to express that anger, and He knowingly, ever so gently, raised me up and wept with me. Just in same way my husband wept with me and my sister wept with me.

Often anger masks whatever underlying emotion we are struggling with. For me, the underlying emotion is grief.  When anger is stuffed or not worked through, the underlying struggle grows and grows and we are suffocated by the anger we feel, and the underlying problem is never solved.

Are you a safe place for people to run to when they are struggling? Do you validate their feelings or squash them by the lack of affirmation you offer.  Are you a safe place for your spouse?  Are you a safe place for your children? Are you a safe place for your friends?

May we all be encouraged to respond to people, to crisis, to pain, to anger, with the grace that our Lord Jesus offered time and time again!

~s