I Am Angry At Her For Getting Old

She dropped the cup and you were angry.

Not with the situation. Not with the years, or the unfairness, or any of the things a reasonable person is supposed to be angry with. With her. Standing right there, at nine in the morning, over a cup.

And you did not say anything, and you picked it up, and you said it did not matter.

Then you spent the rest of the day appalled at yourself. Because how do you get angry at a woman for being eighty three. That is like being angry at the tide.

You have not told anybody about the cup. You are not going to. And what you have done with the anger instead is push it down, where it has been going for about a year.

Anger at the right target

Let me say what I think that anger is actually aimed at, because it is not aimed where you think.

The anger is not about her being eighty three. It is about her going. And there is no way to be angry at that, because it has no face and no address and nothing to shout at, so the anger arrives with nowhere to go and lands on the nearest available surface, which is a woman standing at a sink.

That is not cruelty. That is a large emotion in a small kitchen looking for somewhere to be.

You have been carrying something enormous with nowhere to put it, and anger that lands in the wrong place has never once been evidence about how a daughter loves her mother. Psalm 62:8 says trust in him at all times, ye people, pour out your heart before him, which is the written word providing the address, and the Holy Spirit is the one who receives a thing that has been circling a kitchen for a year.

And she is a whole woman standing at that sink. She dropped a cup. That is all that happened from her side, and she has her own grief about her own hands that she has probably never described to anybody.

She is right about at least one thing you have never conceded, and she is losing more than you are.

You are able to be angry and gentle in the same morning, and one flash of fury over a cup has never once been the truth about what you feel toward her. The Spirit of God is what keeps a feeling from becoming a verdict, and it is written in Psalm 62 that we pour out the heart before Him.

Pour out your heart before him

Trust in him at all times; ye people, pour out your heart before him: God is a refuge for us. Selah. (Psalm 62:8, King James Version)

Three instructions in one verse, and the middle one is the one nobody preaches.

Pour out your heart before him. Pour out is not tidy. It is what you do with a vessel you want empty, and the word does not come with a filter attached. It does not say pour out the acceptable part.

And this is addressed to ye people. Not to prophets or to the especially holy. To everybody, in the ordinary state everybody is in.

You have been given an address for the whole of it, and no part of what is in a person has ever once been refused at that address. It is written in Psalm 62:8 that we pour out our heart before Him and that God is a refuge for us, which is the written word making room for the ugly half, and the Holy Spirit is the one who carries a sentence about a cup into the presence of God without it becoming a confession of failure.

And notice what surrounds it. Trust in him at all times, and God is a refuge for us. The pouring out is not an interruption to trust. It sits inside it.

A person who trusts is a person who can say the unreasonable thing out loud, because the relationship will hold it. That is what a refuge is for.

You are able to say the unreasonable thing to a God who is a refuge, and honesty has never once been a threat to trust. The Spirit of God is the one who holds the unreasonable half without flinching, and Psalm 62 puts the pouring out between the trusting and the refuge.

What pushing it down costs

Here is why the pushing down is the actual problem, and not the anger.

Anger that has been pushed down does not stay down. It leaks, sideways, into tone. It shows up as flatness, or as an edge in one sentence a day, or as the particular efficiency that has crept into the way things get done in her house.

And she can feel that. Not the anger, which she has no idea about. Just something slightly cool in a daughter she loves.

You are leaking something you have never once said, and unspoken anger has never once stayed inside the person holding it. The Holy Spirit is the one who empties a person before it comes out sideways, and it is written that we are to pour out our heart before Him, for God is a refuge for us.

So the instruction is not to stop being angry. It is to say the whole thing, out loud, to God, in the words you would use if nobody could hear.

I am angry that you are going. I am angry that she dropped the cup. I am angry that I am the one, and that this is what the last years look like, and that I cannot say any of this to a single living person.

You are permitted to say all of that out loud, and no sentence in that list has ever once been too much for God to receive. The Spirit of God is what makes an unfiltered prayer safe, and Psalm 62:8 offers the address to ye people with no qualification on who they are.