My Story
When my oldest son, Justin, was left severely brain damaged at age of five, he suffered from neuro crying on a nightly basis. By the end of the day he was almost always overstimulated, and by 5 or 6 o’clock he would begin crying unconsolably. His lower extremities would stiffen, and his upper extremities would contract. This made him extremely difficult to hold and console. Initially I was patient with these episodes, but several months after his injury they were still a nightly occurrence and by this time my patience was spent. Later I would write about these events in my book, My Journey with Justin.
Sometimes as Justin’s crying escalated, I would scream, “Shut up!” as I stomped out of the house in a fit of uncontrollable anger, slamming the door behind me and kicking the porch or slapping the side of the house in my rage. Then I would sit on the porch and wrestle with tears of frustration and helplessness until I could swallow them and breathe steadily once more. All the while, my other children looked on in silent shock and fear. Once I had regained some control, I would walk back into the house, gather Justin up, and begin to rock and bend stiffened legs and work to gently relax his arms that were pulled up tight to his chest. I would speak to him softly, “Justin, Mama’s so sorry she lost her temper. Mama loves you.” This usually brought on a fresh surge of tears – this time tears of guilt and grief until I could once again stop the flow. It seemed I kept a steady diet of swallowed lumps and unshed tears. When Justin finally relaxed and his cries lessened, I would get the attention of my other children and beg their forgiveness.
The Bizarre Journey of Grief
Grief. It can be a bizarre journey on an emotional roller coaster. And grief can come in all seasons of life and stem from many different causes. Sometimes change, even change that we ecstatically embrace, can leave us with a sense of loss. While other losses due to injury, illness, or broken relationships certainly leave us grieving. And the death of a loved one ushers all of us on an unwanted journey into grief. Anger is often a part of that grief process.
After I lost of the son I once had to brain damage, I began to refer the loss that occurs due to illness, injury, or a broken relationship, as a living loss. In my experience, I have grieved these living losses just as deeply as I have the death of a loved one. I walked through that first season of loss after Justin’s brain damage, then I walked through a season of deep grief after his death, and later, I wrote about this journey, all prior to reading On Grief and Grieving by Elisabeth Kubler-Ross and David Kessler. But when I read their book in the spring of 2021 a year into the epidemic, I realized I had chronicled in my book my own journey through the stages of grief observed by these compassionate and gifted authors.
Anger
In their book, anger is the second stage of grief mentioned by Elisabeth Kubler-Ross and David Kessler. I once read that anger and frustration almost always stem from a sense of injustice or entitlement. At the time, I thought I was angry because Justin couldn’t control his screams. But in retrospect, I see that my anger was at the unfairness of brain damage, and I felt wronged by God because Justin had not improved. I felt entitled to something better than irreversible brain damage.
Because we often experience a complex mix of emotions, identifying the source of our anger – that sense of injustice or entitlement is often difficult. My anger was often misdirected at Justin and any other minor annoyance that happened to trigger my raw nerves. I think if I could have identified brain damage as the source of my anger, the reality of my pain and disappointment would have eventually dissolved my anger into tears.
Maybe you are grieving the loss of a loved one and you find yourself experiencing irrational or misdirected anger. Sometimes it helps to try to pinpoint the injustice you feel. Maybe you are actually angry at the person who died and feel wronged because they left you. At the same time, you might feel it’s wrong to be angry at them because they are dead. I understand that inner conflict – I’ve been there too. Perhaps what you are really mad at is just death itself. And if we find that the source of our anger is really something completely beyond our control, like death, then we may find anger easier to control and less likely to be misdirected at others. Or we may discover that identifying the source of our anger also touches our pain and we may need to let our anger soften into tears.
What Does the Bible Say?
You know, friend, death IS unjust because we were not created for death. The Bible says in Ecclesiastes 3;11 that God has placed eternity into the hearts of man. We were created for eternity, but as Paul explains in Romans 5:12,” Therefore, just as through one man sin entered the world, and death through sin, and thus death spread to all men, because all sinned.” One man sinned so death entered the world. And although we were not created for death, we all suffer the injustice of loss. But Christ came to redeem us from death. Paul goes on to say in verse 20 and 21, “But where sin abounded, grace abounded much more, so that as sin reigned in death, even so grace might reign through righteousness to eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.” This good news about grace should allow us to offer grace not only to ourselves but also to others.
So go ahead, be angry at death, be angry at this broken and fallen world where death temporarily reigns. Be angry and grieve; let the tears fall. But be angry and sin not. Don’t let your anger be misdirected at others you love. If your anger needs to come boiling out – and it might – then find somewhere you can go and scream, throw rocks, kick the ground, throw a tantrum, do anything that helps relieve all that pent up tension without harming those you love or anyone else. And as your anger is spent, I pray you find comfort in knowing that all the evil and injustice of this world is only temporary. God will restore justice but, in his mercy, he will also offer grace. And we will be the recipients of both.