Finding Healing Through Writing:
A Journey of Embracing Anger and Rediscovering Spirituality
In this post, I want to share my thoughts and journey that led me to return to writing poetry, stories, and anything that fills my heart.
It all began in March in the year of 2022, when I started feeling a sense that my cultural existence was being emotionally and spiritually attacked.
Statements like "The Riveras always make their presence known by saying, "Los Boricuas/The Puerto Ricans are here!."
Or
Sarcastically being asked, "Is this the Puerto Rican only table?"
Or when your work is treated like a joke, when people speak jokingly about it, not knowing how it is hard for someone who comes from an underserved community to deal with the white gaze and the trauma that comes with it.
These are words that dismiss who we are.
This was my experience in a predominately white evangelical church.
I can add many other reasons that have harmed not only me but others, but I will leave it here for now.
If I’m honest, I have been writing out of anger.
First, there is nothing wrong with anger.
It's OK to be angry as a follower of Christ or of any other religion.
We may quickly seek scripture or receive some type of guidance to avoid what we are really feeling.
Somebody may come at us with, "An angry person stirs up conflict, and a hot-tempered person commits many sins." (Proverbs 29: 22)
We need to be careful how we apply scripture, not rip it out of context.
First, anger is a valid emotion. According to the American Psychological Association, "Anger is characterized by antagonism toward someone or something you feel has deliberately done you wrong. Anger can be a good thing. It can give you a way to express negative feelings, for example, or motivate you to find solutions to problems. But excessive anger can cause problems. Increased blood pressure and other physical changes associated with Anger make it difficult to think straight and harm your physical and mental health."1
Absolutely anything we do, if not checked, can get out of control, BUT feeling angry and ignoring Anger will only prevent us from feeling whole. "To feel is to be human. To minimize or deny what we feel is a distortion of what it means to be image bearers of God. To the degree that we are unable to express our emotions, we remain impaired in our ability to love God, others and ourselves well. Why? Because our feelings are a component of what it means to be made in the image of God. To cut them out of our spirituality is to slice off an essential part of our humanity."2
Secondly, feeling angry can be a good thing when it leads us to move in action, especially for the oppressed. Think about Jesus flipping tables. Anyone would say, "He had an outburst!"
Let me tell you a story…
In the heart of Jerusalem, nestled within the sacred walls of the temple, lay the court of the Gentiles. It was meant to be a place of reverence and prayer where people from distant lands could seek solace in the presence of the God of Israel.
However, on this particular day, the atmosphere was anything but holy. The once serene court was now overrun by a throng of merchants and moneychangers, their stalls lining the sacred grounds and transforming them into a hustle and bustle marketplace.
Imagine yourself as a foreigner stepping into this chaotic scene, longing to connect with the divine amidst the confusion of buying and selling. How could one possibly find peace amidst the relentless, ceaseless jingle of coins?
Jesus arrived in this disarray, his eyes blazing with righteous anger. He beheld the desecration of what was meant to be a sanctuary for all nations to seek God, now reduced to a mere hub of trade. With such conviction, he declared, "My house shall be called a house of prayer for all nations, but you have made it a den of thieves!" (Mark 11:17)
God's vision for Israel had been clear – to be a beacon, drawing people from every corner of the earth to worship Him. Yet, now, the very nations they were meant to welcome struggled to enter the temple gates, blocked by the overwhelming tide of commercialization.
And so, amidst the chaos of the marketplace, Jesus's words echoed, an essential reminder of the divine purpose that had been lost amidst the air of greed and commerce.
I read that anger is one of the eight emotions, which includes fury, hostility, irritability, and annoyance.
I think Jesus carried all these emotions before, during, and after the flipping table.
Third but not least, we know that in Christ, we can leave our anxious and angry feelings at the feet of our Lord.
Checking myself and using writing as an outlet has been therapeutic. But there is more to writing; it is getting to the root of why I feel what I feel and how to unpack that so I don't
1. Using God to run from God
2. Ignoring Anger, sadness and fear3
There are many things I can add to this here, but I will leave it here.
As I walk through a series of Practicing the Way along with my husband and a few other dear friends (it's an individual and collective effort) and rereading for myself, Emotionally Healthy Spirituality, Peter Scazzero, I seek to heal. It's ongoing.
I invite you to break the cycle of first believing in the lies of not feeling and walk into a freedom of "genuine transformation to emotionally healthy spirituality begins with a commitment to allow yourself to feel."4
Then, let's place our anger under the Lordship of Jesus and not let the sun go down (Eph. 4:26-27).
In closing, here is a quote from Cole Arthur Riley, "Don't let them demonize your emotions. Anger in defense of the dignity of another is a sacred practice."5
Emotionally Healthy Spirituality, Scazzero, 2017, pgs. 24-25
Emotionally Healthy Spirituality, Scazzero, 2017, p. 22
Emotionally Healthy Spirituality, Scazzero, 2017, p. 44