Anger and Rejoicing

I am so angry today. And that is okay.

I woke up angry. I had breakfast angry. I drank my tea angry. I browsed a variety of social media feeds angry. The social media feeds were mostly filled with genuine, heartfelt and poignant positivity. I wanted to throw my phone at the wall. (It wasn’t even the terrible kind of “think positive, it’s not so bad!” idiocy that is useless and ignores that things are difficult, it was the genuine kind that acknowledges that difficult but still finds the positive so at least there’s that. It still made me angry.)

Today is Palm Sunday. We attended church via livestream from our living room. The feed was a bit glitchy and there were technical difficulties on their end, and our children were antsy and bored on our end, and I was still angry.

The psalm for today was a portion of Psalm 118 and it contained an oft-quoted line that very much stuck out to me.

“This is the day that the Lord has made; I will rejoice and be glad in it.”
But I am angry.

“You are my God, and I will thank you,” it continues a bit later.
But I am still angry.

“You are my God and I will exalt you.”
But I am still so angry.

“Give thanks to the Lord for he is good; his mercy endures forever.”
And yet, I am still so, so angry.

It is okay. I am allowed to be angry. You are allowed to be angry. It feels like the world is broken right now. Everything is strange and different and difficult and overwhelming. It is okay to not be okay. I’m not. You probably aren’t either. It’s okay. It’s okay to be angry. It’s okay to be sad. It’s okay to be lonely.

It is okay to grieve. I am grieving and I am angry and it is okay. You probably are too.

“This is the day that the Lord has made; I will rejoice and be glad in it.”
But I am so angry.

“This is the day that the Lord has made; I will rejoice and be glad in it.”
But I am so sad.

“This is the day that the Lord has made; I will rejoice and be glad in it.”
But I am so lonely.

“This is the day that the Lord has made; I will rejoice and be glad in it.”
But it is so hard.

And this is the wonderful, difficult, incomprehensible thing: those are not mutually exclusive. I can, and often do, contain multitudes. God certainly does. It is strange and feels a bit contradictory but I can be all those things at once.

I will rejoice today. Not despite my anger, my sadness, my loneliness, but alongside them.

“This is the day that the Lord has made; I will rejoice and be glad in it.”

I will rejoice and be angry.
I will rejoice and be sad.
I will rejoice and be lonely.
I will rejoice and be afraid.
I will rejoice and grieve.

Today is the day that the Lord has made, I will rejoice and be glad in him.

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