Roots, Reality, and Redemption: The Root of Rage

As a child being obedient and following the rules were more important than expressing feelings. Only adults had the right to be heard and children were to be only seen and not heard. I was forced to silence my rage in order to survive as a child, but the rage never left me. As I struggled to repress my rage it felt like it was draining the life force right out of me. My rage felt like a fire burning within me that was out of control.

My rage would surface whenever I felt I had little or no control over a situation or I felt threatened. In the heat of my raging outbursts I expected those I was shooting at to surrender while I was still firing shots at them. I wanted them to come out with their hands high above their heads, fall on their knees, and apologize for ever wounding me because that is the apology I never received as a child from my abusers. Somebody needed to pay for the violating, deceiving and humiliating that went on with me!

Whenever I would try and control my rage on my own it was like ripping a weed out of the soil, but it always broke off just under the surface, and I could never rip out its entire root system. If you are a gardener like me you know if you don’t get the root out the weed just grows back twice as fast. Healing my rage was heart work and only the Good Shepherd could do that.

In the first line of I Corinthians 13:4 where it says “Love is patient” is how I started seeing the Good Shepherd as I started to allow him to heal my heart. Sometimes the pain seemed unbearable when He started pulling up my roots of my rage. There were several times I cried out for him to stop because it hurt so bad and I was tired of hurting all the time! But during this process I heard  Him whisper “I am doing this because I love you and I don’t want these roots of rage to ruin your life anymore”.

He showed me my rage was recreating some of the same traumas from my childhood onto my children. I was setting my children up for them to be full of rage like me.  I was passing the legacy of my abuse on to them.  I needed to stop the cycle.

He showed me how my distorted reality fanned the fires of my rage. When something triggered my rage I would become like this person firing a machine gun I couldn’t handle and shooting everyone in my line of vision.

In my mind I felt I had already paid with much suffering for my abuse and I was entitled to abuse others, just as I was abused. Somebody needed to pay for the battles of my lost past!

He showed me I was so terrified of tenderness that letting people in would require me to remove my combat gear.  Although my fears were appropriate given the confusion of my childhood, but my secret rage rules were not!

Rule#1:  Don’t ever blame, threaten, or inconvenience me!

Rule#2:  Don’t place your demands or expectations on me!

Rule#3:  Don’t make a mistake because you will never get away with it!
If anyone broke these rules I would become suspicious and unforgiving.

I had made an agreement with myself long ago that when I grew up I would never be violated again.

The Good Shepherd helped me take off my combat gear and showed me new ways to survive so that I could rest easy in my own skin and heal.

I really did want to learn how to love and be loved without hurting others and myself. How to say “I’m sorry”, or “It was my fault”, and mean it! I wanted Him to give me a loving heart so I would not fight unfairness with words. I asked Him to help me learn to control myself even when I felt someone was being unjust against me or I felt I needed to justify myself with rage. I wanted Him to help me have more control over my reactions.

Pulling of the deep roots of my rage did not mean I would never feel it again. It is inescapable when we live in a world that has seemed to have lost its moral compass. Sometimes I still need to examine my interpretations to make sure I am not looking at situations with a distorted views. Before my roots were pulled I was trying protect myself in a hostile world by turning to my rage for safety instead of turning to the Good Shepherd for safety.

Jesus was right there, standing there, through everything. The silent compassionate witness who stood there through all the pain and anger and fury and despair, letting it happen, (but surely preventing worse). And he knew that one day, he would take the clay of rage and grief and injustice into his own hands, shaping, shaping, shaping a redemptive jar from what seemed like wasted mud. (Anita Mathias)

Please don’t allow the injustices others caused you to miss out on what the Good Shepherd has planned for you.