Good & Mad

My favorite beach and I broke up months ago.

It is a stunning beach. Rocky cliffs, coves, tidepools, long stretches of sand where you can walk almost uninterrupted except by pelicans, gulls, and sea lions.

My family used to play there. We boogie boarded, built sand castles, and played until the cooler of sandwiches, snacks, and drinks was empty, our noses were full of salt water, and our skin sun-kissed. I used to walk there regularly, have my quiet time, talk with God. If a week went by without my feet hitting the sand, my heart would start to ache and beg.

Especially when it was socked in with drizzly fog. I firmly believe that God lives at the beach. And when He rolls that big blanket of fog in, you're on holy ground. Many, many times the Lord and I have had what felt almost like face-to-face interactions on that foggy beach. Times when He drew me close and spoke directly to my heart. Those have been life-changing moments.

But, in these last months, I just couldn't bring myself to go. Too many awful conversations with my estranged husband happened there. Too many times that should and could have been lovely but that turned sour and stomach-twisting. Too many awful conclusions. Too many bad & sad memories have been attached to my absolute favorite place in the world. Even driving down the coast became painful.

But, slowly we've been making up. (Me and the beach, that is.) The first time I parked on the cliff and walked through the scrub brush to the sand I turned right around and hightailed it to Starbucks for a latte and to sit and stew at the thought of my beach for an hour as if it were it's fault. After that it wasn't so hard. I took the kids down for an afternoon and built a sand castle and searched for hermit crabs. A couple times I've gone there and just sat and let the sound of the waves, the briny smell, and the wind remind me of it's former comfort.

Last week, though, the kids and I saw the sunny and gorgeous weather and decided "School schmool" and ditched our reader books & math pages for the beach. Once we got all settled, I watched it coming at us... No, no, no, no, no!

The fog rolled in...

To be honest, I almost bolted. Even though I knew that God was calling me to come close in that old, familiar way, in our old, familiar place.

Finally, I got up and walked for a while. And then began to pray out loud and sing praise to Him. Safe stuff, you know? Thank You for this, concerned about that, help so-and-so with this and that. But, I felt the Lord pushing me back. Kind of egging me on. "Bring it, Anna! Remember, I can take it!" and that brought with it a flood of frustrated tears.

I told God I was mad.

Really, really, really mad.

So the kids wouldn't be alarmed and so that the roar of the waves would cover our conversation, I walked 75 yards down the shore and let God have it. Hot tears, erupted anger, and me yelling at the Creator of the Universe until I was hoarse. 

I am sooooo angry that my marriage is over! I am so angry that You didn't answer my prayers! I am so angry that I've trusted You, and loved You, and leaned into You, and still You allowed this devastation to happen! It's NOT FAIR! Why?! Why didn't You protect us? Why have You turned Your back on me? Why have You left us unprovided for? Why have you allowed me to be left unloved, blamed, and abandoned? WHY?! I am so angry that this is my children's story! I am so angry that this is MY story! I am angry that there is nothing I can do to change it! I am angry that You haven't showed up and changed it! You are BIGGER, God! You are omnipotent! So, WHY?! I'm angry about the lies! I'm angry about the games! I'm angry about the abuse! I'm angry about the chaos and heartbreak! I'm angry that I tried for so, so, so long and it led to this! I'm angry that so many years were wasted! I'm angry that for years my heart has been so wrapped up in the turmoil that I've been zero use for anything else! I'm angry at myself! I'm angry at him! I'm angry at YOU! I'm so angry that I'll never have a 50th anniversary! Or even a 25th! I'm angry that I'm forever alone! I'm angry just thinking about holidays spent alone, birthdays alone, life spent alone! Most of my marriage I felt alone and now I'm looking at a future alone! WHY?! And on and on I went for more than two hours. Yikes.

The kids, praises be, played happily unaware of the throw down. That alone was a major God thing. 

"In your anger do not sin;
Do not let the sun go down while you are still angry,
and do not give the devil a foothold."

~Eph4.26-27

What does that mean? Can we not be angry? At sin? At injustice? At this broken, fallen world? We Christians sometimes operate as if being angry is the worst thing that we could be. We get so twisted around being safe and polite in our prayers. We put distance between us and the Lord with our false "reverence" that may actually just be a defense of our personal space. But, open up the Psalms to see what King David's intimate relationship with the King of Kings was like, in times of peace and calm and in the midst of horrific, desperate, and scary circumstances. He didn't mince words. David praised and he plead. He raised his hands and he raised his voice. He bowed low in reverence and he begged for vindication. Fake smiles and tepid prayers aren't the way to have intimacy with God.

Anger isn't sin. Jesus got angry. Does that verse mean that we're supposed to work out any upset feelings in a race with the sunset? No. It means that we bring the entire, raw truth of how we feel before God and trust Him to receive it with grace, forgiveness, understanding, compassion, and the sweetest comfort known to man. It means that we don't let the Enemy turn our anger into our idol -- the only thing we focus on. Our anger put in His hands isn't sin. If we hang on to it and carefully tend to it day in and day out, letting it grow and darken, and plot revenge and wish a plague of boils on the person who intentionally hurt or angered us, we clearly need to let that verse penetrate into our souls, repent, and clean out our hearts before God. (Been there. Done that!)

After my more than two hour rampage, I finally yelled, "Holy Spirit, WHAT do You have to say about this?!? WHAT?! What's Your response?"

And, I looked around and waited. Not a lightning bolt in sight.

You know what settled down around me?


Empathy. Tears. Embrace. Nearness. Comfort. A deeper intimacy.


"Yes, Beloved... I know, sweet baby... I hear you...
I'm angrier about this than you are!"

WOW!


"In my distress I called to the Lord;
I cried to my God for help
From His temple He heard my voice;
My cry came before Him, into His ears.
The earth trembled and quaked and the foundations of the mountains shook;
They trembled because
He was angry.
Smoke rose from His nostrils;
Consuming fire came from His mouth,
Burning coals blazed out of it.
He parted the heavens and came down;
Dark clouds were under His feet.
He mounted the cherubim and flew,
He soared on the wings of the wind.
He made darkness His covering,
His canopy around Him -- the dark rain clouds of the sky.
Out of the brightness of His presence clouds advanced with hailstones and bolts of lightning.
The Lord thundered from Heaven;
The voice of the Most High resounded."
~Ps18.6-

And THAT brought me to my knees with overwhelming love for this astounding God who loves His kids so dearly that He is far angrier about injustice and sin that we could ever be. He is for us. He is with us. He loves me and He loves you.

"And we are His portion and He is our prize
Drawn to redemption by the grace in His eyes
If grace is an ocean, we're all sinking
So Heaven meets earth like an unforeseen kiss
And my heart turns violently inside of my chest
I don't have time to maintain these regrets
When I think about the way...
He loves us.
Oh, how He loves us."
~David Crowder Band

So, as of now, I've made up with my beach and am welcoming all future fog. Holy ground. 

Bring it.

Burning Down

Grief is odd.

Somehow the head and the heart don't communicate, which leads to... I don't know... discombobulation. Isn't it strange that life goes on? When your world falls apart, it's bizarre to see people just driving their cars, picking up the kids, playing at the park, buying groceries, going out on a date.

It doesn't make sense.

Grief doesn't make sense. How can your mind know that life as you knew it is over, finished, done, dead, and that it's time to pull up your bootstraps and move on, and yet your heart still have this heavy, thick, sticky, burden of sadness so weighty on your chest that you can barely breathe? Within one body, there's a rip between head-knowledge and heart-knowledge and it's name is Grief.

This year my life burned down. To the cellar, actually. And all the adjacent buildings and barns. Fields and woods, too. It took some time, and it was a messy, messy series of events, and I apparently missed a lot of the warning sirens, but it's gone now.

The worst part is that a big chunk of it is my fault. I am greatly responsible. I didn't burn it down, but I added fuel. I made it so much worse, hurting my kids, hurting everyone in the vicinity actually, and the heaviness of that truth remains. I cannot avoid it. I keep laying my wrongdoing, sin, stupidity, selfishness, and on and on, down at the feet of Jesus, but occasionally they crawl back up to my throat and squeeze tightly and must be laid down again. The sorrow of culpability and failure.

After years of crying out to God to heal my brokenness, marriage, family, and our life that none of us could endure as is any longer, and knowing that although He could do that instantaneously, my husband wasn't willing. He was simply gone and was taking our eldest son with him, and said that he had decided to be done with me and our life a decade or more ago. A decade! I had been trying to hold our family together with tape, and glue, and stick-to-it-iveness, and sheer will, and spit, and sweat for all that time and it was for nothing. And while I was at it, I tried to control, and manage, and manipulate, and protect all my people from what I had hoped to prevent in my own strength which only seriously damaged everyone around me, including God.

Upon hearing this news, I spent quite a bit of time lying in the bottom of the shower wishing I could go down the drain along with the soapy water. I complained to the Lord. A lot. I fell on my face and wailed. Sometimes in public -- like on the treadmill at the gym, or walking on the beach, which was embarrassing but inescapable. For hours at a time I cried before Him. Finally, in the middle of one of these long rants before God, I had a vision. It was of me sitting on a pile of ashes crying and groaning. But, instead of getting up and brushing myself off and cleaning up the mess, I did a strange thing. I grabbed handfuls of those ashes and filled my pockets and poured them on my head and stuffed that gray nastiness into my mouth and wailed over the loss and the emptiness. I threw a big ol' fit trying to hang on to a pile of dead, dirty nothingness.

The image startled me. "Is that what I've been doing, Lord? I'm an ash-saver? An ash-eater?" The answer was a shocking and resounding

"Yes!"

In the middle of that conversation, because grief is odd, I couldn't help but think,

"Does this suffering make my ash look big?"

How is this funny I ask you? But, God and I laughed together. Laughed and cried.

So, in this strange burned out place of loss, the sweetest thing began to happen. God met me here in a way I've never even known was possible. In gentle, tender, whispering ways, He met my emptiness and showed me His beauty -- in nature, in quietude, in the kindness of others, in sending just the right people into my children's lives, in providing for our immediate needs, our daily bread. He comforted me and taught my heart to be thankful and sing praises in the middle of despair which seems like it would be a dichotomy and yet it is not. He invited me to pray out loud and bring all of myself to Him assuring me that He could take it. That that's what He actually wanted from me: a deeper relationship, intimacy, the real me before the real and Holy God. He taught me to transparently model for my children humility and repentance, awe and thanksgiving for God's daily mercies and provision, and to walk in ever-deepening trust and relationship with our Savior.

For that I am wildly grateful, which is strange, don't you think? To be glad to have had my whole life burn down and to have lost almost everything I ever held dear because Jesus was already there beforehand is kind of weird. He knew this overwhelming loss and suffering would nearly take me out, that it would shake the very foundation until everything was uprooted, and He already had compassion for me. In fact, you know what I realized? God actually allowed it all because He wanted ME, my whole heart and soul to be His alone!

That was and is a beautiful comfort. In the middle of suffering.

Peace & distress smashed up together.


So, yeah, grief is odd.




"He has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted...
to comfort all who mourn,
and provide for those who grieve in Zion --
to bestow on them a crown of beauty
instead of ashes,
the oil of gladness
instead of mourning,
and a garment of praise
instead of a spirit of despair.
They will be called oaks of righteousness,
a planting of the Lord
for the display of his splendor."

from Isaiah 61