I Sat With My Anger Long Enough
C.S. Lewis has been my bread and butter for the last few years. I bought his signature classics collection from Costco for like $20, a steal.
I’ve slowly read through many of his books. Some quite heady and hard to read, others were a breeze to get through.
C.S. Lewis’s life wasn’t typical. He got married later in life, which is honestly a bit of a weird story. But he loved his wife, and only a few years after they got married, she passed away. His reflections about loss and love cut deep.
At the end of 2023, someone posted a quote of his on Instagram that has stuck with me.
“I sat with my anger long enough until she told me her real name was Grief.”
There’s been a lot of talk about grief lately at least in my world. Sometimes I get sick of the word. Sometimes I don’t want to talk about all the things lost anymore.
But this quote struck deep. My first instinct with most things is anger. You don’t have to poke me too hard for anger to come out. And it’s not always bad, I get angry about injustice and I want to make it right. I get angry when I hear of a family member or friend being mistreated.
When I actually sit with my anger, the real emotion begins to name itself. Grief and sadness. Behind every mad is a sad. At least that’s what people tell me (although sometimes I’m just straight-up mad — especially when someone wakes me up early).
The phrase “sit with your emotions” has been floating around my world for a couple years now.
I used to honestly not get it. Why would I sit with my negative emotions? I already don’t want to feel them, why would I take time to feel them longer? I don’t like feeling “yucky” emotions.
It felt like this was all anyone said. Sit with your emotions, feel your emotions, be with your emotions.
I mostly rolled my eyes.
But one day I was annoyed and hurt by something, I honestly can’t remember what. And I was sitting at my piano and I couldn’t focus on my practice because I was bothered. So I decided to do what everyone told me to do. Sit with my emotions.
I sat there. I closed my eyes. And I thought about what bothered me, I focused on the emotion in my chest and felt it. Then 15 seconds later, the “yucky” emotion went away. I was freaking shocked.
Maybe C.S. Lewis was on to something.
I made a conscious decision to not stuff my feelings and I actually felt it and it went away.
I think this is what the professionals call processing your emotions.
I’ve practiced that a few times since. It’s wild that it works.
But how does that work with the big stuff? The big, massive emotions and feelings or situations? Maybe like finding out, you grew up in a high-control environment (to put it nicely) with a pedophile as a pastor?
My response to most information has been anger, and rightly so. It’s okay to be angry at injustice and at the magnitude of pain and devastation.
But when I sit with my anger long enough, the grief starts to come out, even when I’d prefer that it not. I am angry at Mike Bickle, then I am sad looking at the wake of devastation caused by him and others.
I am angry that my family has been lied about, mistreated, and cast aside by once close friends. I am sad about all the relationships torn apart and lost.
These emotions are not something I can sit with once at my piano bench and feel and then move on. The anger comes in waves, followed by the grief.
It’s a mountain. It’s a journey that is going to take a long time. But every time I sit and feel the anger, betrayal, loss, and grief, I climb further up and over the mountain. Some days the wind is strong and I can barely move an inch. Other says the wind is at my back and I can feel the sunshine on my face and I make great strides.
Grief takes time. It takes intentionality. It requires patience and grace.
But I am not alone. Every time I feel the emotions come I know that the Holy Spirit is right there with me.
For now, I write, I listen to my epic soundtrack playlist, and I do my best to feel my anger. My anger does its job, it slowly shows me her true identify. Grief
Photo by Annie Spratt on Unsplash