I’m So Angry

Courtney Joseph FallickBy Courtney Joseph Fallick13 Minutes

Excerpt taken from Still Standing: How to Live in God’s Light While Wrestling with the Dark by Courtney Joseph Fallick

Chapter 7
I’m So Angry

I had just left my counseling session, and my heart was filled with sadness. I did not want to go home, so instead I decided to go for a drive. I put all my windows down, turned up the radio loud, and drove.

My hair blew all around and I sang loudly to the music and the tears began to flow. My crying turned to sobbing until I could not see the road in front of me and had to pull over.

A mix of sadness and anger washed over me. I banged the steering wheel with my hand. Life was not fair! How could I love and serve God all my life, and God let this happen to me? How could I love my husband faithfully since I was seventeen years old, and he just replace me with another woman? How was I supposed to go on in life without my best friend of twenty-four years? What in the world was I going to do?

How had it come to this? I was the good girl. I obeyed the rules and tried to smile at everyone everywhere I went. I had tried hard all my life to do everything right and by the book. I didn’t want anyone to not like me, but clearly my husband no longer liked me, or perhaps it was just that he liked this other woman more than me.

I was angry. I wanted to quit everything. I was exhausted from the try-hard life. Look where it had gotten me. Alone. Completely alone. There was not one thing I could do to fix this.

I was so confused. There was no handbook with play-by-play instructions for me to follow, and it felt like everyone seemed to know what I should do next except me.

Being misjudged by others made me angry. Could they not see that I was in the midst of a spiritual battle, and I needed their help to fight? I just wanted support, and the criticism and advice were not helping me. It only confused me more. I wanted them to pray with me, bring me a warm meal, or give me a night off from the kids. None of that was happening.

Darkness had entered our home, and you better believe I was going to fight tooth and nail to keep our marriage together. I felt like there was a target on our backs because we had done so much ministry together, leading Bible studies, doing ministry in our home, serving in our church and online.

I felt that maybe I had caused this spiritual attack because from time to time I had written on marriage on my blog. I was not about to let the enemy win on my watch, and I felt nearly confident we would be reconciled. I knew that this is where my God shines best. He is powerful, and I believed we would, through his power, overcome.

Only that had not happened. The divorce was final, and my ex-husband was a few states away. He was gone, and nothing made sense in my life—absolutely nothing. I felt like someone had stabbed me in the chest. Never had I felt so much pain in my life.

I had a good cry that day. A much-needed sob session. I literally exhausted myself crying so hard. Then I got back on the road, with my worship music playing softly and my mouth completely shut in silence, and I began the long drive home.

Beware, Anger Can Lead to Bitterness
Pain and unanswered questions can lead to bitterness and resentment. Bitterness is ugly. It can fester and cause a lot of trouble if we do not pay attention to the emotion of anger in our life. We must not let it get out of control. This may seem like a strange solution, but the one thing I have learned I need when I am angry is comfort.

“The Lord is close to the brokenhearted and saves those who are crushed in spirit.”—Psalm 34:18 NIV

God gave us tear ducts for a reason. Sometimes tears express emotions no words could come close to expressing, and God saw my tears of anger and pain that day. He saw my broken heart, and he was with me. It was freeing to just let the tears flow. It was freeing to say my questions out loud to him. But after I was done crying, I had to go home, and I had to move on.

Moving forward is necessary.

You see, the enemy wants to keep us stuck in our minds in a loop of replaying past hurts, wounds, and pain over and over. If he can keep us stuck, he can get a death grip on us. Staying stuck will cause us to lose our peace, joy, and love and instead be filled with confusion, bitterness, and anger.

It is so easy for my mind to keep looping, trying to make sense of things that don’t make sense. I remember talking to my parents, trying to make sense of how my marriage fell apart and asking if they could see it coming. My dad said to me, “Courtney, you are trying to make sense of something that does not make sense, and you can’t.”

I have repeated those words out loud to my children and friends when I’ve seen them stuck in that same loop. We can get stuck there for years if we are not careful. I have learned that there are some things on this side of heaven that we will never be able to resolve or tie up neatly in a bow.

Learning to live with things that don’t make sense is hard, very hard. But it is possible! And Paul tells us to let go of the past and move forward toward God’s calling for our lives. We must keep pressing on one day at a time.

“Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus.”—Philippians 3:13–14 NIV

Anger Is a Form of Grief
If you are familiar with the five stages of grief, then you know that the final stage of grief is acceptance. But one of the middle stages of grief is anger. According to the grief cycle, usually before we reach peace and acceptance, we feel the very strong emotion of anger.

You see, anger comes when we experience an injustice. It can be a perceived injustice or a real one. It can come from a loss—like perhaps a friend betrayed you, a boss fired you, your child was overlooked for an award, or your car just broke down after you paid to have it fixed—or it can come from a direct offense, like someone insulting you.

There is sinful anger and there is righteous anger. Righteous anger is being angry at something that angers God. But even when we have righteous anger we are not to sin. Why? Because it gives the enemy a foothold. “‘In your anger do not sin’: Do not let the sun go down while you are still angry, and do not give the devil a foothold” (Ephesians 4:26–27 NIV).

Beware, when the emotion of anger begins to rear its ugly head; you may be walking right into the enemy’s trap. Some people get stuck here and are angry the rest of their lives. The enemy would like to put you in a headlock and just hold you in your state of anger and keep you stuck in the darkness for years. We must break free, and Ephesians 4 says to do it today, before the sun goes down.

What Is the Enemy Using in Your Life to Keep You Stuck?
Are your past wounds holding you hostage and making you bitter?

When our anger is at another person, the key to getting rid of our anger is forgiving that person.

“For if you forgive others their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you, but if you do not forgive others their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses.”—Matthew 6:14–15

Oh, how I wish I could delete certain memories from my mind—the command to forgive would be so much easier—but I can’t. The reality is, we have all been wounded by people in our lives, and we can either replay those wounds over and over and let bitterness take root and grow in our hearts or we can choose to forgive.

Forgiveness is a choice, an active, intentional choice.

If you are struggling to forgive others who have hurt you, you are not alone. Bitterness can make a heart cold. Do you want to be cold? I don’t want to be cold either! I want to grow old gracefully, with a genuine smile of joy that reflects a warm heart of freedom and peace in Christ.

Excerpt from Still Standing by Courtney Joseph Fallick provided by Bethany House, a division of Baker Publishing Group. Copyright 2024. Used with permission.

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