I'm Angry

I feel angry right now. I really feel...angry! There's something else there, too. I usually don't feel like crying when I'm angry, so there must be some grief mixed in. Grief didn't used to make me cry because I never allowed myself to feel it, but now I do and I cry so much more. It's wonderful to be able to let the poison out when the poison bubbles up.

Yesterday I realized that my incessant anxiety is in part fueled by the feeling that I am a burden and no one can handle me. I'm too intense, too sensitive and too high maintenance to be likable or even lovable. A very healthy interaction with someone significant to me began to kill that lie and I was so glad to watch it wither and get sickly and I'm going to enjoy it's funeral very soon.

So, what does that have to do with my current anger. While I was processing through an extremely difficult episode of anxiety I heard myself explaining what it was like for me. Anxiety is a thief, a perpetrator that victimizes me over and over again and robs me of my joy and peace. It robs me of my most cherished abilities: singing, speaking my heart to numbers of people and telling my testimony of what Jesus is doing in my life.

I was supposed to share a small testimony with the congregation on Sunday morning during worship and I wasn't able to because I was so overcome with physical symptoms of anxiety. I couldn't breath, I couldn't stop shaking and I couldn't assure myself that they wouldn't be distracted by me instead of hearing what God wanted to say to them through me. I couldn't have been more like Moses at that point than if I'd had a beard. I refused to speak and my heart broke because I knew anxiety had won another battle. I didn't fail, but anxiety did win.

Stay with me here, I have a point and it does regard you.

If you've never felt what I feel when I become so afraid that I start to doubt reality, than you cannot fully understand the magnitude of why I am angry. That is alright. I don't expect people to understand me completely. They are them and I am me. I don't understand everything you feel, either. I'm glad because if I did I would be very overwhelmed.

You are a musician. I am a musician, or at least I am trying to be. When I began having the opportunity to sing with you I was given a gift I thought I'd never have in my whole life. If feel this way about the others in the worship band, too, but right now I'm talking about you. I look forward to seeing you at Saturday practice. I look forward to getting to know you a little better and maybe even encouraging you. I really look forward to singing with you. It feels a little like heaven to me and Lord knows I've felt enough of hell that I really could use a little more heaven in my life.

I'm angry because I feel (I know this is my feelings only and not necessarily reality) you are staying away for some reason I don't know about and you are depriving me, the band and the church of a gift that we need. I can't speak for anyone else really, so I'll just speak for myself.

Please do not interpret anything I am saying as anything but my feelings as your friend. I am not interested in you in any way other than as my brother in Christ and my friend. I cannot emphasize that enough. I am very open about my feelings and sometimes people misread what I'm saying.

I miss you. I really miss seeing you and singing with you. I didn't even really like you when I first met you because you seemed confrontational and arrogant to me. I appreciated you, but I thought there was no way I could ever be friends with you in a way that would benefit me or you. I thought that God was going to have to teach me to love you, as my brother in Christ.

I was so wrong. God told me to pray for you and I did. Then I started reading your blog. How anyone could read your blog and not praise God for creating such a beautiful mind and heart I cannot fathom. You love God, you love your wife and you love Truth. That is evident. You are gifted and educated and you have so much to offer.

Why won't you sing?!!!

I struggle every weekend to muster up the courage to sing on stage because I love it and I love Jesus and I want to show people what worship can be like, but I really suffer. No one but God knows how much it takes to get me on stage some days. I wouldn't trade it, but I get tired and I desire to be free of it.

I look at you and I know you don't get nervous when you sing, in general. Your abilities vocally are superior to mine and people worship God when you sing. Why won't you do it? What makes you not want to share that gift? What is it about the attention your voice brings you that would make you shut up your gift? I want to understand, but I don't and that makes me angry. Maybe I'm jealous, but that doesn't seem to explain it all. If I were jealous I'd be jealous of your voice and the fact that you don't have to suffer with anxiety. Maybe I do have that subconsciously, but I'm not sure that's really it. I'm angry because I feel you are holding out on our church. They need you whether they know it or not. I need you to be real with me and you're not, yet. I need you to sing with me and you won't. Maybe I feel rejected. That doesn't seem to fit either.

I just want you to know that whatever I feel...anger, jealousy, rejection. It isn't something I am projecting on to you and blaming you for. It is all inside of me. However, what I feel is being triggered by your decision to be absent from worship practice and ministry.

I don't know what you are going through. I don't know anything. Perhaps that's how it should be. It's really none of my business, I guess. I just need you to know that it affects me whether I know about it or not. I pray for you and your wife all the time because I care deeply about you both.

I feel helpless though and I think that makes me angry, too.

I feel I have accomplished nothing by writing this out and that is unusual. I actually feel like I should erase this whole thing and just not care so much. It'd be a lie, but it would be safer than the possibility of you getting the idea that I care about you more than just as my friend and brother.

I'm unusual, I know. So are you, says everyone I know who knows you. So, here goes nothing. Hope this helps you understand why I'm angry and that maybe you'll give me some kind of explanation to help me out.