When We're AngryНамуна

Step 4: God transforms us and sets us free.

One of our favorite spiritual directors, Fr. Richard Rohr says, “If you don’t transform your pain, you’ll transmit it.” That sounds ominous, and the last thing mothers need is another way to feel bad about ourselves. Still, there is no denying it: the pain our grandparents inflicted on our parents was often inflicted on us, and we then inflict some of that pain on our children.

Perhaps more damaging than our out-of-control screaming or passive-aggression, is the anger we do control: the grudges we harbor and nurse like Herodias. Unable to kill John in the heat of her initial rage, Herodias nurses a grudge.

Herodias’s grudge has dire consequences and perpetuates the murderous legacy of her family:

• She entraps and exploits her daughter, who is made complicit in murder.
• She takes advantage of her husband and influences him to imprison John, and eventually to murder him.
• She murders John, God’s own prophet.
• Because of her grudge, Jesus loses his cousin, John’s disciples lose their leader, and they have to bury his beheaded body.

Herodias’s grudge poisons her as well. She is chained by her own pain and anger, trapped inside her own history of trauma, and desperately clinging to her broken plan to get the love, security, and control she craves. Paul warns us in Ephesians 4 to not sin in our anger, and he follows it with practical advice: “Do not make room for the devil”.(v. 27, NRSV).This is Herodias’s sin. She made room for the devil by nursing her anger night after night. Having rejected all of God’s invitations, she experiences no transformation, and everyone around her pays the price.

Tragically, when we don’t get free, we transmit our pain and bind our children. But don’t lose heart. Jesus wants to break the pattern of generational trauma in our families. His grace is bigger than the biggest family sin. Rather than nursing our grudges, Jesus invites us to let him transform our pain so we don’t have to transmit it. This can involve healing prayer, spiritual direction, forgiveness, therapy, and even legal recourse. If we turn to Jesus with our pain, he will show us the right path to take and he will walk with us through the pain and anger that bind us, setting us free on the other side.

Prayer:

God, I do not want to be bound by my anger and grudges. Please show me the next step you would have me take so you can transform my pain and set me free.