Raising the White Flag

It is with no small amount of nonchalance that I confess: I am angry.

Angry.

It's not that I'm just a little cranky, that a foul mood has settled over my day as a dark cloud passes over the sun. I didn't drop a hammer on my toe or get some bad news this morning. I'm afraid it's more serious than that. There is a bright red current of infected hurt and neglected ache running through my chest and proudly calling itself Anger. And it is threatening to undo me.

The pain of events now one year behind us, still surfacing, and after twelve months of dealing and thinking and praying and trying so desperately to heal, all I really want to do is throw stones at the whole thing because I am tired. So desperately, very tired.

The disappointment of realizing my evolution will never meet the ridiculous standards I blindly set for myself and still being so completely unwilling and partially unable to say: it is good enough. It is, all of it, enough.

The errant urge to compare my gifts to another's and shake indignant fists at the sky, demanding an answer and sulkily plotting backup plans that are ill-fated at best.

Toxins and sludge threaten to burst through the sieve and I inwardly yearn for an emptying out. To feel the darkness fall from me until my chest is empty, to allow light to trickle in and pool around the craters and crevices, until Gilead's balm heals my sin-sick soul and it is all joy, grace, peace...wholeness.

I know that the promise is for these things, that my inheritance is grace. I find comfort in the knowledge that if I can abandon my pouting and, standing on tip-toes, peer over the counter, I will see the Father who so lovingly knows and calls me waiting there. But for days on end I am crouched just below, staring at the mess and forgetting all about the grace. I kick the dirt and against the goads and wind up dusty and weaker than I was when this began.

How do we find the courage to stop being angry? Why is it that only after the anger has exhausted us, until we two together have done our worst that we turn our tattered, windless sails toward home?

Courage. Surrender. Grace.