Angry

June 8, 2020

There’s a fly in my bedroom. For the last three days, I’ve been bunking with a fly. I don’t understand why it’s still here, or even still alive. I leave my bedroom door open all day long, yet, without fail, every night I lay down to go to sleep and as my eyes close and I start to drift away I hear the buzz of my roommate flying close to my head like it’s settling in for the night on my headboard. I might lose it.

Every morning I wake up and am starting to get ready for the day when the fly buzzes into my bathroom and rests on the mirror I’m using to get ready. I swear it’s taunting me. How is the fly not gone yet? Three days! Do they even live this long? Is this some lesser-known Marvel character?

I say a quick, “God, get this fly out of here,” and then remind myself He won’t. He can, He easily could relocate the fly as easily as the Bible says He can toss the mountain into the sea, but he won’t. Even though this is a FLY!! He won’t because I asked. I feel angrier at God than I do the fly, but at least I can swat at the fly.

The fly is driving me to finally let the anger I feel toward God be felt. For so long, I’ve been angry with God but I’ve left it unexpressed for fear of falling out of favor with God. I’ve been so foolish, God knows my heart and knows it’s there even if it’s unexpressed. I’ve been holding my heart from God.

I feel like I have good reasons, though. I don’t think I’ve gotten to this place arbitrarily. God’s taught me through my experiences that my feelings, desires, and dreams are inconsequential when held against His plan or purpose. I’m resigned to that fact.

I dreamed a lot as a kid and a teenager. I had wild, outlandish dreams of making a difference in the world, of changing things for the better, and I had hopes of love and marriage and children and buying a house and making a home, and I wanted so many things. I had not only my hopes but also the hopes of my parents for me. My mom and dad shared their hopes for me with me, hoping I would build a better life than the one they had. That I’d go to college and travel and do something truly wonderful with the life God has given me.

And then I had brain surgery, and chemical meningitis, and a rib removed, and hyperventilation-induced syncope, and pernicious anemia, and a tumor, and arthritis and I’ve yet to have a boyfriend, and I have no hope of owning a house and the reviews are mixed on if having children is wise. All of the hopes I’d had and shared with God are not going to come to fruition.

I wanted to be a mom. I wanted to experience pregnancy and I wanted to have three children, at least one before I was twenty-five, and not only am I not married at twenty-five, doctors have given me contradicting advice on if I can have children safely or if it is medically wise to get pregnant. I also can’t have children naturally because it will most likely kill me, or so my doctors tell me. Imagine that, a hope you’ve carried most of your life and shared with God, something I’m told God made me as a woman to be able to do, and I can’t. If I believe the Psalms and the book of Job, God knit me together, created my body with these medical issues in my future, and allowed me to hold the hopes of having children when that was never going to be part of my life or would be the very thing I sacrifice my life over.  

I shared my heart with God. I shared those dreams and hopes I wanted to become reality, and he knew all along, and never said anything. Let me sink years of hopes and conversations and hearing my mom’s hopes and dreams for that very thing and now I have nothing but my heartbreak and hers. And I have to ask a future potential partner to possibly choose me over having children naturally, and not everyone wants to make that choice. I have nothing but heartbreak where I wanted hope.  

I can’t trust God with my hopes. So I can’t trust God with my heart. So I can’t trust God.

It isn’t just this. It’s a million little hopes for my life that were never meant to be. That God knew were never meant to be. If Proverbs is right in saying that God gives us the desires of our hearts, that he places the desires in us, then why would he allow me to have hopes that the body he created the life he planned wasn’t going to let those hopes live? Why allow me to live pain and disappointment on top of the pain he made this body to have and then ask me to live a life obedient to the plan He has for me? I’ve got nothing left.

I don’t trust God will honor my hopes, even when they’re placed in my heart by God, but I do expect God to utilize me for His plan and purpose, so I am just left feeling used.

I don’t trust God, so I feel like I’ll be better off if I do things of my own effort and try to control things on my own will. And then I’m terrified of failing and people-pleasing in order to find my validation from other people since I can’t find it from God, so I’m trying to fix something I am not equipped to resolve and I’m left spinning and hopeless and too afraid to hope.

How long must I be a hurt child? How long must I throw a temper tantrum and pout at God?

I was hurt. God, I was hurt that you planned for my body to have all of the health issues that it did and does at the times it did and does. I felt like you didn’t care about me but about how you could position me and use me. I felt like you didn’t hear me when I cried for help. I feel like you don’t want to know how I feel, that you just want me to do what you planned for me to do. I feel like I’m a vessel you’re placing on a shelf and filling with pens and using to have order and structure on your desk but you don’t care if I’m chipped or the pens leak on me or the dust collects and covers the shine of the colors, all you want is for me to hold the pens and stay on the shelf. But God I want you to care, I want you to find me beautiful and I want you to clean the dust off of me and repair the chip and refresh the paint and care for the pens and I want you to want me on the shelf and smile when you see me working hard to hold the pens and holding more pens than I thought I could at times and taking pens out when you know I’m at capacity. I want you to be delighted that I’m on your desk holding pens and I want to do a good job holding the pens you’ve trusted me to hold. I want that, God.

Maybe not all of my hopes were from you, maybe my hopes will change as you bring me into different parts of my life, maybe my hope was deeper or different than how it was manifesting, maybe they just haven’t been fulfilled yet. I don’t want to live a life closed off from hope because it’s a life closed off from you. I don’t know that I know how to trust anyone, God. I don’t know that I know how to be vulnerable, how to allow others into my life and my heart. I don’t know. I know I’ve been hurt and it feels like I’ve been hurt by you, so I know how much more other people will hurt me. I want to trust you, God. I don’t want to try to control my life anymore. I want to hope again and allow myself to hope and allow myself to trust you. But God, you’ve got to do the work. You’ve got to teach my heart, show my heart how to trust you. I can’t do it on my own.

Paul says in Romans, “I pray that God, the source of hope, will fill you completely with joy and peace because you trust in him. Then you will overflow with confident hope through the power of the Holy Spirit.” I want that so desperately, God. I don’t want to be hurt anymore. I don’t want to be angry anymore. I don’t want to work so hard to try to be perfect in order to earn your love or use perfection to demand the right to have you proud of me. I want to hope because I want to trust you, to rest and abide in you.

I want to hope, God.

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