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--Kathy Shrewsbury, Divorce Care Ministry Leader
THE ROAD TO FORGIVENESS:
Removing the Roadblocks
by Cheryl Denton
Copyright 2011 Cheryl Denton
Smashwords Edition License Notes
This book is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This e-book may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you're reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.
Chapter 4: Leave Fear in the Dust
Chapter 5: Steer Clear of Depression
Chapter 6: Turn Away from Mistrust
Chapter 7: Burn Rubber Past Shame
Chapter 8: Accelerate Beyond Low Self-Esteem
Chapter 9: Navigate Through Pride
Chapter 10: Follow God's Character
Chapter 11: Persevere Mile by Mile
The End of the Journey is Just the Beginning
Coming Soon from Cheryl Denton
He who chooses the beginning of the road chooses the place it leads to. It is the means that determines the end.
Harry Emerson Fosdick
As a survivor of abuse and trauma, I have been personally challenged by the concept of forgiveness. For years, I asked ministers, psychologists, Christian friends, and counselors how to forgive people who constantly hurt me. Some gave me utterly ridiculous answers. Others suggested doing things which were far from my beliefs. Finally, a wise counselor helped me to see that forgiving abusive, toxic, or dangerous people calls for a specific approach. This method has brought me peace, and I hope it will help you, too.
While this book was initially planned to help survivors of abuse and trauma, I believe that it will assist any reader who is struggling with forgiveness. Whether you’re having trouble forgiving your spouse for leaving his dirty clothes on the floor again, or forgiving the criminal who left you feeling victimized, I pray that this book will help you to achieve a sense of understanding about the forgiveness process.
I like to think of forgiveness as a long, winding road. Along the way, we encounter roadblocks that may delay us, force us to turn back, or send us on a detour. At first, I thought of these roadblocks as orange construction barrels. Over time, I came to realize that most obstacles on the road to forgiveness are other people. They force us to stop progressing, or they detour us through the dysfunctional roles they play in our lives. Sometimes, we’re the ones standing in our own way, holding onto unresolved feelings as tangible as stop signs on a highway construction site.
Often, we can’t see through the dysfunction surrounding us and the turmoil within us to find a way to forgive. The first nine chapters detail the roadblocks to forgiveness, providing a starting point for removing them from our lives. These chapters are not intended to help readers fully recover from deeper issues that prevent them from forgiving. For more in-depth reading, please consider other titles from my Spiritual Journey Series, as well as books listed at the end of each chapter.
I discovered through my own struggles with forgiveness that we need to take a closer look at God’s character. Understanding our Creator helps us to see more clearly why he calls us to forgive our enemies. Chapter 10 shows us who God is and who he wants us to become. By striving to become more like God, we can better understand the hearts and minds of the people who have wounded us so deeply. This little book cannot possibly describe God adequately. One of my favorite resources for studying God’s character is Wayne Grudem’s Systematic Theology (1994). Other resources about God are listed at the end of Chapter 10, as well.
We all know that we’re supposed to forgive, but sometimes we just can’t do it right away. Other people tell us to get over it, but we can’t. If we decide to press charges against people who have hurt us, a judge will inevitably ask us for our input regarding punishment. This just makes us feel the guilt and shame of the event all over again. We wonder how we can suggest a punishment while extending forgiveness. Some Christians believe that we must turn the other cheek and allow law-breakers to walk free. We’ll be looking at these issues in Chapters 10 and 11.
At the end of every chapter you will find the references I used to gather information about forgiveness. They are under the heading, Going the Extra Mile. For deep and lasting change from within, I would recommend consulting as many of these books as you can. It's important to pause and reflect, writing out the answers in a journal to questions that are posed. Working through this book slowly and carefully will bring far greater results than if you just speed-read from beginning to end.
Please send me your thoughts about why you believe it is so hard to forgive. Tell me how you have resolved this problem. Your comments will always be kept confidential, unless you request that I share them with other survivors. I would never reveal your identity. Send your thoughts to me at cheryldenton.com/contact.
Forgiveness is a long journey, one with a destination that cannot be reached overnight. It is a great privilege to travel this road with you. I pray God’s blessings on your efforts.
Cheryl Denton
1
Anger dwells only in the bosom of fools.
Albert Einstein, German physicist
Why begin with anger?
Since the 1980s, Harvard University has been tracking a disease which they call intermittent explosive disorder, or IED. The symptoms include weekly outbursts, such as road rage, fist fights, arguments, and other events. Rage of this magnitude can lead to heart attack or stroke. According to a 2006 Harvard study, 10 million adult men in the United States suffer from this disorder.1
The truth is, anger erupts because we are too uncomfortable with other feelings, such as shame, fear, or pride. We begin our journey with anger, because it comes to us easily in so many forms, harming both relationships and health. Confusion about how to manage anger causes us to revert to old habits that no longer serve a useful purpose. And as long as anger remains, we cannot move forward along the road to forgiveness.
How does our anger hurt others?
I don’t like to be in the presence of angry people who are out of control. It makes me feel uncomfortable, and it often hurts others. Consider the following conversation, which a child observed from an adjoining room:
Broken Plates
“What do you know about anything, you spineless worm?”
The child heard his mother shouting from the next room. A cupboard door slammed.
“More than you think I do,” came his father’s quiet response.
The child peered around the corner. “You have no clue,” his mother said, banging a stack of plates down on the table.
“I know that shouting at me won’t help,” his father said.
“I have to shout,” she said, her voice rising, “You never listen!” She picked up a thermal coffee mug and hurled it at her husband. The boy’s father ducked just in time. The mug hit the wall behind him with a thud and rolled across the floor. The child watched coffee drizzling down the wall.
“I’ve had it!” his father said loudly. “I’m getting out of here.”
When the door closed behind him, the boy’s mother picked up a plate and slung it, like a Frisbee, across the kitchen. It shattered loudly against the closed door. Watching his mother’s angry outburst frightened the child, who clamped his hands over his ears. It did nothing to block her final words.
“Coward!” she screamed after her husband. “Run! Just like you always do!”
How does our anger hurt us?
When we lash out at others in anger, we say things and do things that we later regret. Often, we fracture the trust that others have placed in us. Some words are so hurtful that we permanently destroy friendships and family relationships.
Consider the harm to the child in the above conversation. Not only does he fear and mistrust his mother, but he also fears that his father may never return. The husband has been so badly mistreated by his wife’s anger, her odds of getting him to forgive her may be pretty slim.
When angry people call others names, insult them, shout at them, and smash things, relationships may suffer irreparable damage. If we’re not careful, our anger may hurt our health more than it hurts the person with whom we’re angry. Unresolved anger can lead to depression, anxiety, heart attack, stroke, high blood pressure, insomnia, and headaches.
“Anger is like cigarette smoking,” says Howard Kassinove, Ph.D., an anger researcher at Hofstra University. “In the short run, you feel good. In the long run, you’re more likely to die of heart disease or stroke. People think it’s macho to be angry. It’s more macho to be alive.”2
Resolving our anger is essential if we want to learn to forgive. When we stuff or re-direct our anger, it pops up unexpectedly as impatience, passive-aggressive behaviors, and nightmares; or self-destructive habits, such as over-eating or abusing substances.
If we get angry, does that mean we’re bad?
It’s important to understand that it’s okay to get angry. Everyone does from time to time. Anger is our heart’s way of telling us that something needs attention. It’s how we express our anger, however, that determines whether or not we enjoy good health and positive relationships.
Let’s consider some thoughts from the Bible on the topic of God’s anger. Romans 1:18 (Contemporary English Version) tells us that God gets angry. “From heaven God shows how angry he is with all the wicked and evil things that sinful people do to crush the truth.”
The Bible also tells us that Jesus got angry during his time on earth. Mark 11:15-17 (NIV) recalls the story of Jesus’ angry reaction when he discovered people using his Father’s temple as a marketplace:
On reaching Jerusalem, Jesus entered the temple courts and began driving out those who were buying and selling there. He overturned the tables of the money changers and the benches of those selling doves, and would not allow anyone to carry merchandise through the temple courts. And as he taught them, he said, “Is it not written: ‘My house will be called a house of prayer for all nations?' But you have made it a den of robbers.”
God made us in his image, therefore it is natural for us to feel angry at times. Anger is our built-in warning signal that tells us when something is not consistent with God’s Word. There’s nothing inherently bad in feeling anger, but hurting others with angry outbursts is definitely wrong. If we respond to it properly, anger can actually help us to redirect our thoughts and actions. It may help us to identify why we are so upset so that we can pinpoint the real feelings underlying anger.
Why are we so angry?
There are countless reasons why we might be angry. Our spouse shames us, embarrasses us, or betrays us. Our parent forgets about us, criticizes us, tells our secrets, hits us, or ignores us. Our best friend starts rumors about us or makes unkind remarks to us. A neighbor falsely accuses us. Our boss under-appreciates us, shows favoritism to someone else, or breaks promises he has made to us.
When we fall victim to traumas, such as abuse, sexual assault, natural disasters, combat, or crimes, we may find it difficult to contain our anger. It may be directed at the person who hurt us, at others, or at God. If a criminal victimizes a loved one through violent acts, such as kidnapping, rape, or murder; our anger may grow into rage.
Lloyd Garver of CBS News speculated about anger in America:
Daily expressions of anger could be symptoms of the anxious times we live in. Perhaps people are living in a constant state of tension and fear about the world… we feel frustrated and angry because we don’t know what we can do to change things.3
While it is true that many events may spark our anger, I believe that there is a primary underlying cause for most anger: unmet expectations. We want the people closest to us to be proud of us, to cover over anything shameful or embarrassing that we do, and to stick up for us, no matter what. We expect them to remember our needs at all times, to encourage us, to keep our secrets, and to treat us gently.
When we make mistakes, we want others to keep quiet about our faults, to speak kindly to us, and to correct us only when absolutely necessary. Even if we’re far from perfect, we want them to appreciate us, to treat us fairly, and to keep their promises to us.
Since other human beings are as prone to hurting people as we are, somewhere along the line, our needs are not going to get met; and we’re going to fail to meet others’ needs, too. We must all come to understand that no one can consistently provide all of these things for us, except God. And when we fail to live up to one another’s expectations, it’s imperative to learn how to let go of our anger, forgive, and move on.
Are there different types of anger?
There are different types of anger, which show up in varying degrees. Sometimes, it’s easy to let go of our anger, because the offense was unintentional or not very serious. However, at other times, letting go of anger becomes the most difficult thing we are called to do, because someone intentionally victimized us through a serious offense.
I have divided this section into two parts. First, I describe a typical scenario involving anger in a situation where it is not terribly difficult to forgive. Second, I break down several types of angry reactions and explain why forgiveness may be far more difficult in more serious situations.
Anger that is easily resolved
There are some instances where anger can be dealt with more easily than others. If someone hurts us unintentionally, it’s easier to understand how it must feel to walk in their shoes. Consider the following anecdote:
Let Go
“John, can I talk to you?”
John looked up to find the department manager standing beside his desk. John hoped he was there to talk about the new ideas that he had submitted that morning. The manager was tops in advertising, and John respected his feedback. “Sure,” John said. He followed the manager into his office and sat down in one of the leather chairs facing the desk.
The manager said, “I’m not going to sugar-coat this. We’re letting you go.”
John felt as if he’d been sucker-punched. In the next instant, he balled up his fists and resisted the urge to throttle the manager. He’d worked harder than anyone else on the new project. Didn’t that count for anything?
Before John could respond, the manager said, “You’re the last guy I would ever consider letting go. Your work ethic and attitude are great.”
“Then why are you doing this to me?” John asked.
“You’re not the only one,” the manager said. “The entire department is being replaced by an outside agency.”
“Are they keeping you?” John asked.
“Yeah,” the manager said, crumpling up a paper and flinging it into the trash. “They’ve offered me a staff position in Tulsa.”
“Tulsa?” John felt sorry for the man who sat before him, an award-winning artistic director with years of valuable experience. He felt the anger for his manager draining from his body. But in the next instant, he was mad at the company. He said, “You deserve better than that!”
“We all do,” said the manager. “But in this economy, no one’s getting what they deserve.” He stood up and held out a hand. “I’m sorry.”
John shook the manager’s hand and said, “Me, too. Best of luck in Tulsa.”
Like most people, John’s initial reaction to an unexpected loss was anger. He felt that he deserved better. But when he considered that he and his manager were both in the same boat, his compassion for their predicament helped him to quickly forgive the man.
His manager made it easy for John to forgive by offering an apology for something that was beyond his control. John may still get angry at others, such as our country’s economists, the CEO, and so on. In this instance, he did the right thing in letting go of his anger so that he could accept the apology and forgive.
Anger that may be difficult to resolve
In this section, we take a look at several types of anger that are not so easily resolved. Anger resulting from victimization, anger directed at God, anger directed inward, anger misdirected at others, anger veiling other emotions, and anger suppressed out of habit can all be far more difficult to settle. Until we get beyond these types of anger, forgiveness will remain at a distance.
Anger directed toward people who victimize us
Some incidents make us enraged, because someone seems to have intentionally picked us out of the crowd and victimized us. There doesn’t appear to be a clear reason for the crimes committed against us, so we harbor anger toward our perpetrators.
Cyber Bullies
Diana hurried across the school lawn, headed for her classroom. She couldn’t wait to show her teacher her science project. She’d worked on it all weekend, so now she’d be able to go on the field trip to the science museum. As she rounded the corner of the building, her phone vibrated in her pocket. She pulled her phone out and read, There’s no way you’ll be going on the field trip. You’re too stupid.
Diana wasn’t sure who would send something so mean, but she had a feeling it was Jennifer Peters. She deleted the text and continued towards the school entrance. Her phone vibrated again. She ignored it and opened the front door of the building. Again, her phone vibrated.
She thought her mom might be texting about picking her up after school. She decided to read the incoming messages. The first one read, You’re so ugly, you don’t deserve to ride on the same bus with us.
Diana felt as if she couldn’t breathe, she was so mad. The second text said, In fact, you’re so ugly and stupid, you should just go home and kill yourself.
Diana blinked back tears. She couldn’t take this bullying any more. She kicked a trash can, and then fled towards home.
When something like this happens to us, it’s hard not to get angry. Diana felt like an innocent victim, minding her own business, until the bullying started. It would be much harder for her to forgive Jennifer than it was for John to forgive his manager, because Jennifer seemed to have been intentionally picking on her. Forgiveness in this case would be hard to achieve, because the hurt seems so senseless, and no one was offering any apologies.
Anger directed toward God
At times, our anger is directed at God, because we believe that he should intervene whenever we stand in harm’s way. When he fails to shield us from suffering, our anger can cause us to quit praying, reading the Bible, or attending church. Consider how a new mother named Ellen handled a loss:
God Doesn’t Care
The doctor came back into the delivery room, without the baby.
“Where is he?” Ellen asked, propping herself up on her elbows.
The doctor put his hand on her shoulder and said, “I’m sorry, Ellen. There was nothing we could do. He was stillborn, just like the last one.”
Ellen turned her head to the wall and gritted her teeth. She’d never go back to that church again, where everybody had told her they were praying for a healthy baby this time. God didn’t care what happened to her. If he did, he wouldn’t let babies die.
Like Ellen, we may find ourselves in circumstances that are so devastating, all we can do is turn our anger on God. We may put up walls around our hearts that are made out of bricks of anger stuck together with the mortar of bitterness. Anger toward God can make forgiveness really difficult.
Anger directed inward
In some circumstances, we may become angry at ourselves for something that we perceive is our fault. Ted had a problem with anger directed inward:
A Father’s Remorse
Ted lay back on the weight bench and began to bench-press hundreds of pounds. He forced himself to ignore the pain, resolutely pushing himself to lift more than the day before.
One of the trainers appeared and said, “Hey! You’re going to hurt yourself.” He helped Ted to drop the weights onto the rack.
Ted sat up and wiped his face on a towel. He knew that lifting without a spotter was dangerous, but he didn’t care. Maybe one day the weights would drop on him, and that would be the end. He never should have stopped at that bar on the way to pick up Mary from work. If he had just driven by, she wouldn’t be in a nursing home.
He said nothing to the trainer, but picked up his gym bag and walked down the block to a bar. If the lifting didn’t kill him, at least the beer would numb the pain.
When we hurt others through our foolish choices, we may punish ourselves with anger directed inward. If we remain in this angry state, we may never be able to forgive ourselves. If we weren’t at fault for someone else’s pain, turning anger inward may serve as a cover-up for false guilt and shame, which we’ll address in chapter 7. Dealing with the feelings underlying our anger must take place first, before we can forgive.
Anger misdirected at others
Displaced anger shows up unexpectedly to events that may not even warrant it. It often gets directed at someone who has nothing to do with the situation.
Christmas Without Kids
Burt hung up the phone and said to his wife, “The kids aren’t coming home for Christmas again this year. They’re going to Shannon’s parents.’”
His wife nodded and disappeared into the kitchen.
Burt wondered why the kids didn’t ever want to come home. He’d been a good father, hadn’t he? The more he thought about it, the angrier he became. When his wife returned to the table with a bowl of soup for him, he shouted at her, “I’m sick of soup! Can’t you cook something a man can sink his teeth into?”
When anger gets misdirected, people often begin arguing over others’ behaviors, instead of talking about their underlying feelings. Burt’s shouting may cause friction with his wife. If Burt responds in this manner to most disappointments, he may be slowly eroding his relationships, both with his wife and his children. Misdirected anger often lurks as a hidden roadblock to forgiveness.
Anger veiling painful emotions
Anger often masquerades as a cover-up feeling for other emotions, such as fear. Perhaps Burt fears that this may be his last Christmas, and he doesn’t want to miss spending time with his children and grandchildren. Maybe the prospect of growing older and feeling forgotten is stirring up memories of being neglected as a child. His wife’s dinner may be churning up anger from decades ago, when all that his mother could afford to feed him was thin soup without meat.
Whenever we encounter angry people, we need to stop and consider what underlying emotion they may be hiding. For many, shame and fear are at the top of the list of most embarrassing feelings. No one wants to admit either one, particularly men. Nevertheless, as long as we use anger to cover up our emotions, forgiveness will remain out of reach.
Anger suppressed out of habit
Some of us have been taught that it’s bad to express ourselves honestly, especially regarding anger. Here’s an example of a young girl who was taught this misconception:
Children Should be Seen and Not Heard
Carly raced through the living room, with her sister on her heels. “You can’t catch me!” she shouted over her shoulder.
Her mother grabbed her by the arm and said, “How many times do I have to tell you to keep your voice down?”
“Sorry,” Carly mumbled, looking down at her shoes.
Minutes later, she was chasing her sister in the opposite direction, and Carly said with a laugh, “I’ll get you!”
“I told you to be quiet!” her mother said. She swatted Carly on the thigh.
The slap stung, and Carly began to cry.
“Turn off the tears,” her mother said, “or I’ll bust your butt.”
Carly gulped and forced herself not to cry.
Her mother said, “Children should be seen and not heard.”
Carly ran outside and into the woods, to get as far away from her mother as she could. She sat down under a tree and began to cry.
Her sister appeared and said, “Better not let Mom catch you crying.”
Carly swallowed the lump in her throat and wiped her face on her sleeve. “I wasn’t crying,” she said. “I got something in my eye.”
If we have been taught, as Carly was, that we cannot express our emotions, we learn to suppress them. We bury them under unhealthy choices, such as comfort food, alcohol, drugs, pornography, excessive TV viewing, over-work, silence, or any other avoidance activity that only leaves us feeling worse. It’s important to accept that it’s healthy to express our emotions, including anger, as long as we’re not hurting ourselves or others. When we conquer suppressed anger, we can move toward forgiving.
How can we manage anger?
There are many excellent books available on the topic of anger management. A few are listed at the end of this chapter. If uncontrolled anger is the roadblock that is preventing us from forgiving someone, we can read or seek the help of a professional counselor, psychologist, or specialist to help us re-program our faulty responses. With their guidance, we can learn how to replace our knee-jerk reactions of anger with more appropriate responses to express our feelings. Whatever method of anger management we choose, we must make a conscious decision to respond with control to things that anger us, otherwise we may damage our health and our relationships.
RRRR!
Understanding that lashing out in anger is hurtful to us, we can adopt whatever anger management method best suits us. I have learned to follow four simple steps to make sure that I don’t make costly mistakes with my anger. I call this process RRRR!, which stands for Remove, Repeat, Review, and Return.
Remove
Every single time we feel ourselves getting angry, we can remove ourselves from the situation before we do something we will later regret. We can take a walk, breathe deeply, take a warm bath, or try some gentle stretching. Proverbs 30:33 reminds us, “For as churning cream produces butter, and as twisting the nose produces blood, so stirring up anger produces strife.”
Taking time to calm down is an effective way to avert trouble. However, we must not turn our time-out into an avoidance tactic. When we are calm, we must continue on to the next step.
Repeat
We can memorize and repeat a Scripture passage, such as Proverbs 15:1 until our anger simmers down: “A gentle answer turns away wrath, but a harsh word stirs up anger.” Repeating the passage to ourselves until we feel more peaceful helps to dampen the fires of anger. If this seems too long to remember, we can simply repeat a single word, such as peace or breathe.
Review
After we have calmed down, we can look at the situation and review what happened. We may find it very helpful to write out exactly what happened so that we can understand why we got angry. Were we behaving badly because we were afraid, lonely, needy, out of control, or being pushed around by someone else? Is our anger telling us that something about our relationship with this person needs to change? Are we under too much stress, fatigued, overworked, hungry, or frightened? Or are we dwelling on that old, suppressed anger that continues to fester within our souls?
Return
The worst thing we can do after calming down is to avoid the person who made us angry. After we have had time to remove, repeat and review, we must return to the scene and offer our apologies for our abrupt exit. We should do our best to set things right with the ones who have been left waiting for us to finish a discussion.
Conclusions
Whether our anger stems from unmet expectations or unfulfilled needs, it must be resolved. Left to fester, anger will destroy our relationships and health. Remember, it’s okay to get angry, but we must not hurt ourselves or others when expressing it. While my RRRR! technique may prove to be helpful when we get angry, it may not be enough to deal with more difficult forms of anger. If necessary, we should seek the help of an anger management professional. After our anger is under control, we can begin asking for and receiving forgiveness.
Discussion Questions
Write down some past events that have made you angry. Which incidents happened because someone failed to meet your needs?
Which of these incidents do you think may have been intentional? Were any of them unintentional?
Is it possible that there’s an experience you’ve never resolved, which you’re covering over with anger?
Are you struggling with anger that is easy or difficult to resolve? What type are you battling?
Have you created an anger management tool for yourself? Describe it.
Going the Extra Mile
Carter, L. The Anger Trap: Free yourself from the frustrations that sabotage your life. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley, 2004.
Carter, L. The Anger Workbook. Nashville, TN: Thomas Nelson, 1992.
Lerner, H. Dance of Anger: A woman’s guide to changing the patterns of intimate relationships. New York, NY: Harper Collins, 2005.
Smalley, G. and T. Cunningham. From Anger to Intimacy: How forgiveness can transform your marriage. Ventura, CA: Gospel Light, 2009.
2
Getting inside the mind of a terrorist wasn’t difficult at all. Even as children, human beings fabricate elaborate revenge fantasies. We’re not a particular species. Check out popular video games.
Alan Dean Foster, science fiction author
Can anger lead to revenge?
We learned in chapter 1 that anger may be the most frequently felt emotion that stands in our way of forgiving someone who has hurt us. The second roadblock, revenge, is out-of-control anger that pushes us to retaliate.
When thoughts of hurting our enemy consume us, we may cause terrible consequences for ourselves and others. Until this roadblock is dealt with, forgiveness stands far off. Consider the account of Alexander Foster’s change of heart about revenge.
After Alexander Foster’s son, Alex, was shot in the head by a teen at party, he wanted revenge. Alex convinced his father that revenge was not the way to handle the situation. Forgiveness was the better response. This father, humbled by his son’s tenderness of heart, said, “It’s embarrassing for me to be reminded of [this truth]. I wanted revenge. I don’t anymore. We’re not victims; we’re survivors. I just want to move on.”4
Why shouldn’t we get even?
As survivors of highly disturbing incidents, such as abuse and trauma, we often find ourselves thinking about revenge. On the surface, we appear to be normal, decent people. What others don’t know is that we lie awake at night, hatching up plots to get even with the person who hurt us so deeply, as Alexander Foster did.
Robert Bulwer-Lytton, a British statesman and poet, wrote, “Anger ventilated often hurries towards forgiveness; anger concealed often hardens into revenge.” This quote perfectly summarizes the source of our thoughts about revenge: unexpressed anger.
As the survivor of an abusive relationship, I could never express my anger. As a result, I dreamed about my abuser crashing into a tree, driving over a cliff, or drowning at sea. I once dreamed that I had murdered him, and my greatest concern was how I was going to keep the police from finding the body that I had buried under the hardwood floor of my front entry. When I awoke, I was horrified that I could think such awful things.
When someone wounds us deeply, as in abusive relationships, repressed anger leads many of us to dream of revenge. The longer the traumatizing continues, the more bizarre our daydreams and nightmares may become. We may even pray that God will take out our enemy so that we can find some relief. We know this is unhealthy and immoral, but we can’t seem to stop the thoughts.
The problem with this type of thinking is that revenge is like a bottle of poison. Each time we think about hurting the person who has injured us, we take a little sip. With enough sips, we will eventually kill ourselves, because thoughts of revenge can wreak havoc on our health. In the meantime, our enemy may be going about his business, happy as ever, while we’re slowly poisoning ourselves.
I edited Love Walks by Faith: We gave it all to Jesus, the biography of Charlie Osburn, an evangelist who speaks about forgiveness. During interviews with Charlie, he told me that vengeful thoughts for his next-door neighbor nearly destroyed his family, his marriage, his health, and his faith.
After Charlie discovered that his neighbor had been molesting two of his children, he went berserk. He said, “I hated my neighbor with such a passion that I wanted to kill him. I took him through the court system, but they only gave him three years probation. That made me angry at the court system. I became angry with all authority. I even became angry with myself.”5
A priest finally pointed out to Charlie that his plans for revenge were going to kill him, not the next-door neighbor. It took a while for this to sink in, but Charlie eventually learned that he had to give the entire situation to Jesus if he wanted to survive. In time, Charlie forgave his neighbor, and then gave up both his thriving restaurant and his position as mayor to devote his life to speaking about forgiveness.
Most people never reach the point of vengeful thinking that Charlie and I did. Getting to a place where we’re willing to murder someone means that we’re overloaded with anger. The majority of us simply limp along through life, dragging behind us a heavy bag stuffed to overflowing with unexpressed anger. We’ll take a look at how this type of anger can destroy everything we want out of life, particularly forgiveness.
Is it true that some people never get angry?
Everyone gets angry, and yet some people seem to be able to keep their cool all the time. Why is that? They may either have a highly developed support system, where they vent their feelings in a safe place; or, they may be holding in their anger.
Since everyone gets angry, the longer we stuff all those volatile feelings, the greater the odds are that we’ll seek revenge. Our anger may lead to our destroying something, hurting someone, or even murdering our enemies. If someone tells us that they never get angry, we can be pretty sure that they’re not telling the whole truth. Until they do, forgiveness will remain out of reach.
Passive aggression
Underhanded anger veiled in sarcasm, practical jokes, or mean stunts is called passive aggression. In the movie, Grumpy Old Men, Walter Matthau’s and Jack Lemmon’s characters spent years trying to get even with one another. I’m not sure that they even knew why they were fighting, as Lemmon left smelly dead fish in Matthau’s car; and Matthau did his utmost to steal Lemmon’s girlfriend.
These actions, which seem small in comparison to murder, can still cause a great deal of harm to our relationships. No one can contain long-term anger forever. When we try to, it slowly seeps out, like volcanic lava flows that ooze down a mountainside. Often, our target is our enemy with whom we’d like to get revenge. Sometimes, we direct our pent-up anger at innocent bystanders. We learned in Chapter 1 that spewing our anger on someone other than our enemy is called displaced anger.
Passive aggression packs a powerhouse punch on delivery, backed by years of unexpressed feelings. As long as this roadblock remains, forgiveness is unattainable.
Passive aggression in children
Children often suffer from passive aggression, because they don’t feel safe expressing themselves in front of their abusers. Consider Franny, a child who was struggling to hold in her anger:
The Crack of the Belt
Franny awoke in the middle of the night, quickly alert to the voices in the next room.
Her father shouted, “What you did was wrong! Do you hear me?”
Franny could not hear her brother’s muffled reply, but she could easily hear the crack of her father’s belt on flesh. Her brother cried out.
“Quit sniveling!” her father shouted. “Real men don’t cry.”
Franny wished she could rush into the next room and hit her father with that belt, but she was far too small. Instead, she crawled into the space between her bed and her dresser, where she found a screwdriver that her father had dropped earlier while repairing the window. As the shouting continued, Franny angrily chiseled deep scrapes into the wall, which her father had recently painted.
The next morning, Franny’s mother discovered the damaged wall. “Why did you do this?” she demanded.
Franny wished she could tell her mother how frightening it was when her father lost control. She wanted to beg her mother to take them far away from the shouting and the belt. Instead, she said, “I didn’t do that. Dad must have.”
Because Franny and her brother were not allowed to express themselves, their anger over their maltreatment had to be let out slowly in passive-aggressive actions, such as the chiseling of the wall. Fear of having their anger discovered led to frequent lying.
When children learn to behave in this manner to survive childhood, they often carry their passive aggression and lying into adulthood, where it interferes with relationships and forgiveness.
Passive aggression in adults
Adult survivors may hold in their anger for years. Suddenly, they may become passive-aggressive people who surprise us with their actions. For example, Walter was a gifted violinist with a promising future in the symphony, but when he left home to go to college, he surprised his friends.
The Vengeful Violinist
At the campus book store, Walter’s friend asked him, “Why are you buying that anatomy book?”
“Anatomy’s required.”
“In the music program?”
“No, pre-med.”
“You’re giving up on violin?” Walter’s friend asked.
“Yep,” Walter said, lifting another heavy medical volume off the bookshelf.
“Why?”
“Because if I go into medicine, I can prove that I’m smarter than my old man.”
“Everybody already knows that,” his friend said.
Walter thought of the countless times his father had raged at him during his practices and before concerts, calling him stupid, nitwit, turd-brain. He’d show the old man what kind of a brain he had. He turned to his friend and asked, “Can you think of a better way to give my old man the finger?”
In a passive-aggressive manner, Walter was seeking revenge for the hurts his father had inflicted on him. He mistakenly believed that out-performing his father and abandoning the music that led to verbal abuse would give him a sense of satisfaction.
Our passive aggression or vengeful acts may not even faze our enemies, but they may eventually destroy us. Look at how revenge destroyed Walter’s future as a brilliant violinist. The world may be missing out on the next Itzhak Perlman. Worse yet, Walter will probably never feel satisfied working as a doctor. God gifted him to become a musician, and doing anything less may leave him with both unexpressed anger and a sense of frustration over his future.
If Walter had chosen to express his feelings to someone, such as a counselor or trusted friend, he might have been shown that using passive-aggressive behavior to get even with his father was hurting him far more than it would ever hurt his father.
We can remember passive aggression as anger that we keep stuffing deeper and deeper. When we are stressed, we may find ourselves quietly destroying something and then lying to ourselves or others about what we have done.
How can we get rid of passive aggression?
Passive aggression serves only to keep us hyper-focused on our angry thoughts. Not only does this block us from forgiving, but it also prevents us from living with the type of internal peace that we must have to feel emotionally healthy and in tune with God. Left to fester, passive-aggression may eventually turn into devastating acts of revenge.
Releasing the unexpressed anger that leads to passive-aggression may take a long time, but I have found that the following three steps are helpful: a) Recognize that I’m angry, b) Get it out and get on with my life, and c) Let go and let God.
Here’s a story that I believe illustrates the steps necessary to let go of the passive-aggression that stems from unexpressed anger:
Packing Anger
The first day of Bob and Elaine’s second honeymoon was fun, exploring the lake and pine forest surrounding the remote cabin they had rented. But on the second day, Elaine began to feel edgy.
When Bob allowed the oatmeal to boil over, she snapped, “Why do you always have to do that?”
“Sorry,” Bob said. “I’m not used to this old stove yet.”
When Bob sat down on the sofa to read, Elaine said, “So, are you going to just read all day? I thought this was supposed to be a second honeymoon.”
Bob laid aside his book and sighed. “I thought we were going to rest a little, too.”