Dear friend,
He found in the temple those who sold oxen, sheep, and doves, and the changers of money sitting. He made a whip of cords and drove all out of the temple, both the sheep and the oxen; and he poured out the changers’ money and overthrew their tables. To those who sold the doves, he said, “Take these things out of here! Don’t make my Father’s house a marketplace!”
I have been thinking about how you named it plainly, that what you are carrying right now is anger, not sadness wearing a disguise, not something smaller you can rename to make it more manageable. I want to leave that where it is for a moment rather than move past it toward something more comfortable to discuss.
In the Gospels, Jesus overturns the tables in the temple courts, and the text does not soften what He felt into a milder word. It calls it what it was. I notice the passage does not rush to explain it away or apologize for it on His behalf. That has stayed with me over the years, because so many people are taught early that anger itself is the failure, when the text seems more interested in what a person does with it than in pretending it should not exist.
I am not going to tell you what to do with yours this morning. I only want to say that naming it correctly, the way you did, is not a small thing. Most people spend years calling it something else. What would it cost you to let it simply be anger for today, without rushing to fix or forgive or explain it?
A prayer
God, You see the anger she is carrying and You are not asking her to pretend otherwise. Stay near her in it, and keep her from having to carry it alone today. Amen.