Angry

I am tired and I am angry tonight. My very act of sitting here at my computer and writing is an act of defiance – an act of rebellion and frustration. I have been hit hard by depression again this week. I noticed recently that my patterns of writing have changed from the early months of this depression. Then, everything stirred me to write – every frustration, every triumph, every worship service and house church, every time I had a spare moment there was a pen in my hand, chronicling the moments and emotions. Now, there is little that drives me to write. My love affair with words has not faded. What has happened is that, as time has passed, there have been fewer and fewer new ways to describe this time. What were once daily and even several times daily entries are now one or two a month, often jotted on my computer for speed, rather than with a pen on paper for the cathartic release of making the words appear.

Thursday nights have become my time for musing. I have an evening class that ends at 7:45. From 5:00 until 7:45 I sit and learn about abnormal psychology. At 7:45, I pack up my books, and head outside (after bundling up appropriately!). While I stand and wait for the bus (which arrives at 8:04) I hum worship songs to myself, trying to center my mind away from the school work that has consumed my day. Once I board the bus, I use the 45-minute journey to muse, to reflect, to read scripture or whatever meditative work I’m currently working my way through. I know that once I get home my mind will be taken up with other things – it’s Thursday night after all – there is television to watch, emails to read, things to do to get ready for whatever I have planned for Friday. But, those 45 minutes on the bus – those are mine, to quiet my heart, to allow my mind to wander, to wait for God’s occasional voice.

Tonight, I alternated between reading, and reflecting on things I’d written earlier in the day, and things I’d contemplated on the bus journey to school this morning.

The most accurate sentence I’ve written all day is the very first one of this entry. I am angry. It has been building all week, perhaps even for months. This is an anger I have faced before. The circumstances of my life are making me furious at the moment. I am twenty-two years old. I am physically healthy. I come from a very good family. I was never abused or neglected. My parents and siblings loved me and I knew it. And yet, I have spent at least the last two years struggling with a depression that refuses to be satisfied. And it makes me livid! My siblings had the same experiences I did, and they turned out healthy. Why me?

Did you know that a woman who’s mother was depressed stands a 30 percent greater chance of being depressed herself? I’m part of that statistic. But my mother has recovered, and I am still floundering. Why did God intervene there and not in my life?

Maybe that’s the biggest part of all of this. I am furious with God. Do you have any idea how long it took me to admit that for the first time? Probably a year ago, a good friend listened to one of my many rants about my life, and asked me if I had told God how angry I was. I told this friend that I couldn’t possibly tell God that, that I couldn’t yell at God in that way. My friend just looked at me, and told me I needed to do it. It took me until a couple of months ago. It’s still crazy hard to say.

Some time ago I journalled about a book I had just read. Stumbling Towards Faith by Renee Altson. It was, at the moment I read it, incredibly liberating. I was reading it again on the bus tonight. I have carried it with me often in the intervening weeks, always knowing that the truth contained in Renee’s words was something I would come back to. Tonight, as I read, her words were once again cathartic – a balm to a soul that was wondering if I was the only person alive who felt this way about life and faith. I want to close with her words, so freeing in their expression of my soul’s cry tonight….

a god who wants my woundedness but not my covering – WHAT KIND OF GOD IS THAT? a shivering god, a jealous god. “give me yourself,” he says, “trust me without those protections, trust me with your pure vulnerabilities.”

and I laugh.

“and what will you do with them?” i wonder, knowing all too well what this means.

the rage wells up within me, like fire.

“and what have you done? what have you saved me from? i have spent a lifetime yearning for you, aching, longing, desiring to be whole more than any other thing. i have brought as much as i could to your feet – passed them over, surrendered my will, and all i have received is silence. this much i have given, and would give more, but for a word, an acknowledgement, a sense of comfort. and yet there is still nothing.

…i am so angry. i have been so angry for so many years, yet i walk a fine balance between anger and fear. which feels safer? which will get me through? often i fear the anger itself, the way it rises up in me, clutching and desperate and needy… (Stumbling Towards Faith, 45-46)


There is so much more to that passage, but due to time, space, and copyright issues, that’s all I’ll include. Go buy the book, and then email me and I’ll give you the page numbers for several other passages that spoke to my wounds tonight… And Renee, if you happen to find this entry – thanks. You can’t know how many times your words have encouraged me to keep journeying over these last months.