I love being angry?

by Alecia Klauk
(Chapin, SC)

I need to warn you. I'm not sure where this is going or where it will end. This column will be a quest in itself.

My stated purpose here is to give hope ... "hope at the end of the rope." Right now, in this moment, I feel like I may be at the end of my own piece of string, so I am hoping the Spirit will write this one for me and give me a glimpse of glory along the way.

I'm not sure where we are heading here, but I can tell you where it began. About 3:30 this morning. I woke with a start. Breathing hard. Was it real? Wait. No. I'm in my bed, not the desert, safe, not chased. The snakes felt very real, their bites sharp, and their tenacity to catch me igniting my panic. They pursued, latched on, and I had to shake them loose. And they ... were ... a-n-g-r-y.

I laid awake a long time after shoving my heart back in my chest, thinking about how my waking self relates to my sleeping self with great similarity. Feeling chased. Feeling bitten. Feeling scared. Feeling tired of running. Hurt. Afraid. Pained.

It's funny how different things look in the dark. Shapes are without definitive form. Colors disappear. Faces fuse, textures wane, beauty melds. As I laid in the dark, I related to that, too. Life in the dark.

The last two months have been the most intensely dark of my life. I'm sure I will say those words again sometime in the future, as I have said them before now. I suppose it is complicated by being a new road, one fraught with many potholes. Pain. Confusion. Frustration. Dare I say, doubt.

I am still in the midst of this particular gale, and I am not sure what the end of the story looks like. I know what I am hoping for, but I am unclear as to how to get there. I want to be better for this, to rise above it, to love Jesus more, to be more thankful, to revel in life more ... I suppose the theme would be abundance. I want this to further drive me to the feet of my Adonai and find Him able to heal all that hurts. That's where I want to be.

And yet I find myself being chased by biting, mean snakes. Did I mention I hate snakes? No chick since Eve likes them, but I really, really hate them. I won't look at a picture of one, won't even touch a page with a picture of one. They scare me, freak me out, make me nauseous. But they were unavoidable in my dream, and these were mean. The waking ones I feel on my heels are, too. Vicious. Hungry. Enemies.

In my dream, I had to shake them off. Energy was applied. Effort was required. Funny how pain saps those precious commodities and leaves me feeling vulnerable. But God offers me what I don't have. I just need to learn to grab a hold of it.

But ... I wish you were in front of me and I'd ask you if you've ever felt this way ... I am back to needing the energy to reach for the energy. Catch 22. Need strength to grab what I need for strength. Perhaps that dilemma is the source of the frustration I've been feeling lately.

Something happened in that dream, though. I found it. From somewhere, I was able to move enough to shake those serpents off. Maybe I could do it waking, too. I wonder ... what did I feel right before moving, just in the dream? What drove my feet to run, then to stop, then to face, then to find an attack of my own.

Anger. The fear turned to desperate rage and I moved. Hum.

I often feel like the way out of wilderness is paved with peace and happiness. Maybe those are the results, but not always the way? Maybe God can use my frustration to fuel me. I need to choose to allow Him to direct it where it belongs, but it seems to me that perhaps there's something to that.

I admitted from the first word that I did not know where this column was going. I honestly had no idea we'd wind up finding hope in being angry. God is sneaky. But it makes sense, however strange, at least to me.

This most recent ordeal, like every other, is a result of the fall of man, whose author strives for my destruction and despair. He longs for me to waste away in subservient inactivity. He brought sin and its oozing effects and wants nothing more than for as much as possible of that toxic tar to stick to me.

My soul is bought and paid for. That cannot be had. But my peace, my contentment, my healing. All up for grabs. And no matter how much I may run from it, the truth is that I have an active role to play in where I go from here.

I see the battle lines in front of me. The choice. Freeing and maddening to acknowledge that despondency lays on one side and hope on the other. Fear and faith. Suffocating in death and breathing in life. I fall on my face and again ask for the motivation, the energy, the drive to reach for life.

That is where I must leave these thoughts, nothing clean and tidy, everything wrapped up. No pretty ending. Just a choice. Me sitting there, trying to reach when I want to run.

I love Shakespeare. Love him. Hope that his dying words reveal that he really did know Jesus so that we can have a fantastic improv group in glory. But part of why I love him is his honesty: in his masterful story-telling, it doesn't always end clean and pretty. The tragedies end, oddly enough, with at least a trace of tragedy remaining.

There is always at least a measure of redemption as well, but the pain remains. Makes it feel real. More like real life. I suppose I'm in good company to leave a piece of writing in that somewhat awkward limbo of some tragedy remaining. Perhaps we kind find a bit more redemption ...

Perhaps with this picture: I did finally go back to sleep. It took a long time. But my heart finally quieted enough to rest. When I woke again, instead of a jolt, it was the gentle touch of my husband kissing me goodbye, and the image in my mind was of a lamb.

I don't know what the dream even was. But he was young, white, sweet, beautiful. He was peace, and he was close. I didn't mind that, welcomed it. Such contrast from those wretched snakes.

My mind instantly went back to the snakes. Then to the lamb. The snakes. The lamb. Fear. Peace. The choice. I can't pretend I've got this particular gig wired. I don't. But I see with some clarity today.

Anger at the enemy of my soul will help. Honesty is certainly required. I think that gratitude comes before salvation, so that has to be a component -- contemplating that a lot lately. Grief will make me feel, process, express, and eventually accept. There are many aspects, a multi-step progression toward a new normal. I have walked enough miles in the wilderness to know that there is no easy, straight way. I just need some energy for that first step.

Maybe seeing all that is the glory from the Spirit I asked for as I started writing, maybe even just the anger. Maybe it's just a little clue, enough to put one foot in front of the other: to be angry at the one who hates me and let that drive me to the One who adores me.

One other thing. I have been begging God to show me the way out of this vastness. I just briefly described the challenges, the guests of Sorrow and Suffering who join the journey.

But there is another truth. In that begging, even in the moment of that silent prayer for emotional direction, I heard, "I am the WAY." What? "I am THE Way." I'm trying here, say again, please. "I AM THE WAY." I'm not sure what theological pot to put that in, how to fully file it (aside from the obvious salvation truth), except that there is no path, no healing, no hope without Him. My Jesus is the Way. The WAY. THE Way.

And maybe, when I just drop, collapsing into the hot desert sand, the anger giving way to sheer exhaustion, He offers a hand, lifts me up, gently drapes me across His able arms, and walks the path of suffering He knows better than I will or can ever know. His compassion has phenomenal, cosmic credibility.

And I can rest there. Safe. Secure. And high above the snakes. In the arms of the Lamb.