it’s okay to be angry-just don’t live there
When someone asked me a decade ago why I wasn’t already writing for special needs parents, my gut response wasn’t pretty.
When someone asked me a decade ago why I wasn’t already writing for special needs parents, my gut response wasn’t pretty. It was honest, but not pretty at all. I was scared to write for special needs families. To be able to write in a way that addresses the very real pain points in a way that could be encouraging would mean I’d need to deal with my own pain as a special needs parent. I’d need to dig deep-digging deep can unbury a lot of unpretty things.
Some of our greatest blessings come when we listen to the Holy Spirit-some of our greatest heartaches come when we ignore Him.
In February of 2010, my marriage was crumbling. I honestly wasn’t sure how everything was gonna work out or if I even wanted it to. One morning, after a night of harsh words, I got down on my hands and knees and bargained with God. I prayed that He would do whatever it took for my husband to open his eyes. That’s kinda sorta how it happened-just add me explaining that everything was my husband’s fault and not mine. You get the picture.
Two days later, I was taking our son to the doctor’s office. When I pulled into the parking lot, a chill washed over me, waves of sheer terror emerged that I had never felt before. Panic told me to leave. I stayed.
My sweet little toddler, happily babbling along without a care in the world, was playing in his car seat. Everything in my gut told me not to go inside. I ignored it.
I explained my illogical panic to our doctor. We both dismissed it to stress and exhaustion and carried on. Within 48 hours of my prayer to God, everything had changed. My fervent prayer had been answered, but in a way I wouldn’t reconcile for years. Letting my child suffer wasn’t on the bargaining table in my request to God-how dare He.
“So I do not run aimlessly; I do not box as one beating the air.” 1 Corinthians 9:26
In the midst of caring for a now unhealthy child, I quietly clutched my feelings inside. They seemed irrelevant in the midst of a child’s suffering. The devil whispered constant words of remembrance-dancing with the growing guilt that was engulfing me.
A year later, still holding onto loosely shredded ropes, our marriage had a decision to make. We needed to work it out or walk away. We chose an intensive marriage boot camp(I promise, it’s really a thing).
Between calls to babysitters, a counselor told me that it was okay to be angry. I had never heard that before-that to feel angry was to be human. That the feeling of anger is telling us something bigger. It blew my mind-guilt and shame and fear and grief had formed claustrophobic walls. And anger? Anger was the duct tape trying to hold it all together. Once I acknowledged that anger, it was so much easier to allow forgiveness to flow. The weight of the world lifted a bit. I asked God to forgive me and I was no longer angry at him. Forgiveness has a way of freeing us from chains of anger we may not yet understand. It would be years, though, before I would forgive myself.
I read once that unhealed trauma survivors have symptoms instead of memories. My symptoms looked like exhaustion, chronic illness, hair falling out, stomach ulcers, blurred vision, wanting to shut out the noise of the world, wanting to stay safe, wanting my children to be safe.
Anger builds walls to allow us to not deal with these things. Forgiveness means to acknowledge them, to acknowledge your presence in them. It forces us to move beyond our own strength, to learn from them, to allow the supernatural to enter our soul and change us. It’s a big deal; it’s holy ground work.
Over time, I met other special needs mamas and realized that hurt and fear can build angry walls of survival in any of us.
Over time, I met other special needs mamas and realized that hurt and fear can build angry walls of survival in any of us. I was no longer alone in the special needs parenting journey. There was a sense of commonality-a community found through small local groups and social media chats. I found that other special needs mamas were struggling with feelings similar to mine-anxious clouds of stress and worry remain in the room. It’s coupled with the unspoken requirement to remain the ever-present student of our children-constantly on watch, isolated, worried, watched but unseen, sleep deprived, researching the overwhelming, facing unspoken challenges, navigating a world few of us understood until we started living in it. The option to fall apart isn’t an option. Willful determination and the love of a child is the courier between days and nights.
It took nine years to forgive myself. To deal with the anger, I had to deal with myself. It wasn’t pretty, anger rarely is. Suffering loses it strength to gnash us apart if we can identify its purpose; when we can point to the demons we are slaying, we understand God’s strength. I held God’s promises like manna for survival, consuming it daily. I spent a lot of time in blunt conversations with God. In turn, I started to understand. While my child has experienced almost full healing, I desperately needed healing too.
It likely won’t surprise you that the very places you feel you are drowning are the very places the enemy will try to attack. You were never created to drown in your life, you were meant to bring glory to God. Even if your life looks nothing like you thought it would, each step (whether it feels like a crawl or a claw) is progress toward holy healing. And on the days it feels like the enemy is whispering you to the battlefield, having a battle plan ready will be your survival guide.
And on the days it feels like the enemy is whispering you to the battlefield, having a battle plan ready will be your survival guide.
My blunt conversations with God centered around six distinct conversations:
Begging for peace
Seeking comfort
Learning gratitude
Remaining in constant prayer
Building faith
Accepting and offering grace
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