Get a grip.

I've been neglecting God lately. I mean, I still do the praying thing throughout my day, but my Bibley learnin's and book readin's have slowed down. It's not for a lack of passion about it, so much as a lack of entitlement. Today, I listened to a sermon about anger and heard this:

23 "Therefore if you bring your gift to the altar, and there remember that your brother has something against you,
24 "leave your gift there before the altar, and go your way. First be reconciled to your brother, and then come and offer your gift.

From Matthew, chapter 5.

That's one reason why I stopped reading and stopped learning. These days, my heart is full of anger and I can't forgive the root(s) of it.

Sometimes, when my anger makes me generally irritable without realizing the cause, I write an "I'm mad at" list. I write and I write until I run out of things to be angry at.

These days, my anger is tangible, but it causes underlying angers to seep to the surface also, resulting in that general irritability again.

Still in chapter five:
44 "But I say to you, love your enemies, bless those who curse you, do good to those who hate you, and pray for those who spitefully use you and persecute you,
45 "that you may be sons of your Father in heaven; for He makes His sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust.

I recently finished reading "The Shack" by William P Young, and in it, there is a discussion about forgiveness. The main character, Mack, asks how he's supposed to forgive when he can't forget, and one of the God characters answers that forgiving doesn't necessarily mean forgetting. All it means is loosening your grip on the other person's throat.

I have no idea what forgiveness really means, but I do know my grip is still tight. I got hurt, sure, but the things I've found out since I got hurt are what made me most angry. The lies, deceit, manipulation and just plain horribleness I endured without realizing keep emerging bit by bit and my grip tightens in consequence.

To pick up the Good Book, or any book relating to God things in any way would be hypocritical at this time. My heart can't be open to learning- it's too full of anger and wrath. It's preoccupied with a deep, seething hatred.

The rain does fall on the just as it falls on the unjust. Whether it's by believing in Karma or that God will make all things right in the afterlife, we all crave justice. When we are wronged to the utmost degree, the desire for immediate justice can be overwhelming.

But what it comes down to is independence and control. Even if the saying says something like, "Good Karma might take a lifetime to find you but bad Karma will hunt you down", and/or Jesus promises redemption at the end of all this, I don't want to wait for either Karma or God to react. I want justice now. I want things made right now.

What if what is wrong to me is not wrong to God? What if there is no retribution? Same goes for Karma. What if the bad Karma I'm hoping for will never come because in the grand scheme of things, there is no need for it?

And I know that the longer I stay angry, wrathy and hope for bad Karma on somebody else, the more likely Karma will get me instead.

So I crave independence and a little power over the situation. I don't want to trust in God to handle it because I feel like that is probably what got me to this place to begin with. I want to take back the control that I used to have as an agnostic. I want to say, "This is how it's done, God. This is how you make people pay in the here and now."

In my head, it's not even a revenge thing so much as a justice thing. Revenge tends to escalate. Justice evens out.

Either way, I can't pray for God to intervene when I spend my day pretending I'm independent of Him. It's just not right. You can't have both. You can't have both God's justice and your own. Well, in theory you can, but God's justice will fall on you too if you do that.

Each action is independent of past actions because each new action requires a decision to occur. He chose to hurt me brutally. That decision has been made. The choice becomes either hurting him back or carrying resentment and hostility towards him or forgiving him and letting it go. Either way, it's a new decision independent of the last one, no matter how hurt and broken I am from it. And the only option that turns to God is the last one. The other two do not.

I believe that when faced with a balanced moral dilemma, the hardest option is usually the right option. By "balanced", I mean each option has a strong pull towards it, even if the option seems terrible. For example, hurting somebody deliberately because they hurt you is obviously wrong, but we're still so driven by anger and spite to do it anyway. Forgiving them and moving past it with humility is by far the hardest option and clearly the most morally virtuous.

All that to say that obviously it is in my best interest, both emotionally and spiritually, to forgive in this situation, but my hands just can't let go of his throat and until I can release a little bit, I won't be right with God. My heart will be closed with anger, a destructive and unhealthy anger.

I know all that.

And I also know that trying to get to that place of healing without God kind of goes against everything written in the Bible, but I just feel that I need forgive myself and work on myself alone first.

A long time ago, Dr Phil said that being angry makes you a victim. If you're mad at somebody, you're a victim of something they did. You're angry because you feel they've wronged you. If you really humbly think about it, it's true. I hate that. As a girl who was abandoned by her mom, who has dealt with sexual assault in some form twice, who has endured years of emotional abuse that escalated to physical abuse, and who has ultimately survived it all, feeling like a victim of anything is just irritating.

I know I'm a strong person. I know I've lived through a lot. I know I can handle this. But the betrayal revives sometimes, either through conversation or through indirect more accidental discoveries, and it just slaps me back down again and the only way I can get back up again, even if only temporarily, is by clutching his throat until my metaphoric knuckles turn white.

I'm not a perfect person. I'm as broken as it gets. But I'm just so used to having nobody to rely on or to lean on.

A Christian who knew a lot of my stories asked me how, through everything I went through, could I never turn to God. He just wasn't there. The times when a person might need God the most are the times when they feel the most abandoned by God. How can a person find God when they're so alone? In the times of joy, when there's so much to be thankful for, it's easy to praise God. In those moments, it's easy to say, "God is good."

I think that's why I worked so hard last year. Things were good. I was happy. I worked relentlessly to learn about God and Christianity because somehow in my heart, I knew it wasn't going to last forever and this was my only chance. My heart was open to it, but I also was at a point in my life where I really didn't need anybody to rely on. I wanted to learn about God for God, not as a potential support system in a time of need, and I always believed that was the only way.

But now, I've learned enough to know that independence from God is not possible. You can fight for your independence all you want, but at the end of the day, you're still a child of God. You can go your own way, but in the end, you'll get somewhere where you're supposed to be anyway.

How do I let go of all of the survival mechanisms that have gotten me to this point? How to I stay open and forgiving when my person feels so attacked? How do I quit fighting?

The only way is to give it up to God, but I'm just not ready to do that yet.