I wanted to forgive, but now I'm just angry.

The sand has been everywhere this week. The dryness of the desert has threatened to suffocate me in a way I haven't felt in a while. I felt I was ready to move on; like I had come to a place of being able to forgive and keep walking. I felt like I had reached the top of a hill and could see that a future was ahead and that that future looked bright! I was still walking through the rock and the sand, but my view was better. But today, this week, the path I have had to keep walking took me into a valley. One that is dry and where the sun is beating down on me. The wind is whipping the sand around me so strongly that I can't see anything; not even the hand in front of my face. I'm on that same path that I know the Lord is leading me on, but the valley on that trail was the last thing I expected right now.

And today, I'm Angry.

I'm Angry at my circumstances. I'm angry at the person who caused me so much hurt. I'm angry with people who don't deserve my wrath. I'm angry with myself for letting it all get to me.

I have been told by so many people that divorce is like a death and that there are multiple stages in grieving that loss. Anger is one of them and it is one I really felt like I have been able to keep in check for a while; until this week.

I won't go into the details of what caused it. Those details don't matter. What does matter are the emotions I felt right before the anger came.

Last week I spent some time in my "second home" seeking the Lord and learning from a couple of very wise people. The gave me some tools I need to move forward in my life in the direction that I feel like God is calling me. For lack of a better phrase, I had a mountain top experience; one that was leading me down the path of forgiveness for all of the hurt I have felt. But when I came down from that mountain, I was faced with the truth of what was behind my hurt and that was when anger hit me like a hurricane.

That feeling of the high and low reminded me of Moses on the top of Mount Sinai. Here he had climbed this mountain and was literally seeing the hand of the Lord carving out the Law into the stone. He was learning, he was being fed truth, and he was watching God himself lay it all out before him. But here was a piece I had missed for so long: as Moses was on the mountain and the Israelites were growing restless down below, God saw their actions. He saw their hearts, their worry, their doubt, and the solution they thought they had found for themselves. They couldn’t see the top of the mountain, so they went around God.

And GOD was ANGRY.

He was ready to wipe the earth clean of all of them and Moses was the one who begged God to give them a second chance.

But when Moses reached the bottom of that mountain, he finally understood why God was so angry with his people, and he felt the exact same emotion! If you take a look at Exodus 32:20-31 you see Moses’ reaction and the anger that came over him and needless to say, Moses let it all out. The tablets were shattered in a fit of rage and at the end of it all, Moses had to go back up the mountain to start all over.

He was in the holiest place possible, but coming down the mountain, he saw the valley; he saw the mess and the emotion of anger showed up big time.

Feeling all of your emotions when you are broken and hurt are all part of the process of being able to walk out of your pain. That is how you walk out of brokenness. That is how you step into forgiveness. Until you process your hurt, you will never be able to truly forgive the one who hurt you. You can’t let yourself sit in those emotions. If you do, they will overtake you. But the day when you feel it fully, that is not a bad day.

That is a GOOD DAY.

That is a day where you have let yourself take another step through the wilderness. Sometimes you are on the mountain and you can completely see the trail leading you out. Sometimes you are in the valley, caught in a windstorm where every step you take is taken blindly in faith. Both are meant to grow you. Both are meant to build your trust in God. And with every successful step, you gain a little more understanding that God is still in control of it all.

You gain just a little more faith.

You gain hope. 

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