Anger

Angry. This is a new feeling for me. I grew up most of my life feeling like I wasn´t allowed to feel angry, always assuming that it was wrong and that I should get rid of the buildling emotion inside of me so it never fell out and hurt someone. For so long I have learned to hide anger, to stuff it down, or to let it out in small ways that don´t hurt people.

But here in Duran, I am angry. And I am realizing that it is okay.

The other day at our afterschool program we had to kick out two of our students for 2 months. What happened is that we asked them to leave the program earlier that day for fighting, and they proceeded to sneak back in and play in the dangerous part of the park (open sistern) and collect sharp objects. We had to chase them around the dangerous area, one of them already had a cast from a previously broken arm, all the while they laughed and giggled at their evasive game. In the end when we finally caught them they grabbed handful of rocks and threw them at the kids as we passed by on the way to the exit, physically carrying them out.

What breaks my heart, and what makes me mad, is that this is not their fault. They live in environment where they are not appreciaited, or loved, or given the opportunity to be kids. And they will soon, one day, be entering adolescence, where it will only get progressively harder for them to ever feel like they have value or that they are deeply cared for. The reason we have our program is for kids like them, who need to be reminded how special they are, to have a safe space to play, and to be surronded in an environment of caring people.

This incident opened up a huge wound in me, one that hurts for all the people that I am working with. I realized in the situation with my kids at the program that this evil, of many evils, is not their fault. They are victims of something much bigger, and they have no way out. Our system has mistreated them, and it will likely do so until they are old.

I have neighbors who have to run out of their houses and scream at passing water trucks in order to have enough to get by for a day. Sometimes these tanks stop, other times they do not. The piercing cries of women and chilldren up and down the street makes me wonder how I got here, and how it is that I am so spoiled. The hardest is to see the eyes of my neighbors when the tankers have passed; I see their worries spill out in front of me. If they will be able to feed their kids that day, or wash their clothes or bathe their bodies. How long will it be until another truck passes? Tomorrow? Two days? and what if it doesn´t stop again?

And the thing that is hardest for me is that I have water, in great abundance. At the turn of a faucet I could let it run for hours, fill bukcts and tubs and pots and pans, but 30 feet away from my house is a woman who will have to tell her child that today they won´t be any dinner. This injustice, boling under my skin, makes me angry.

But what do we do with anger? How do we carry all the pain in the world? I don´t want to be it in my community, I don´t want to internalize it, I don´t want to put it in on the kids, or their parents, who were likely raised the same way. I am angry at a system, a system that I am part of and contribute to. Whether in my power, in my ingroance, or in my privilege, I am in some way contributing to the harm of my brothers, the pain of my sisters, and the distress of my neighbors. We are all somehow connected to the evil that is being dumped on the human race.

The problem is that I want to do something to change it, but I cannot. I am not bigger than the system. I have no answers, which turns me directly to the one who does: God. God is the only person big enough to carry the weight and pain of injustice, and if I think what I am experiencing here is injustice, I cannot even fathom the things that people around the world live through and have to carry for the rest of their lives. Which brings me back to the fact that I am an instrument of God´s love, and that is the first thing I am ever called to be: love. God does not call me to change the world, or stop injustice. He doesn´t even call me to understand it, He knows I never will. But what He does call me to do is love, and not just my kids and my community, but even my enemies, the people that seem impossible and void of all humaness.

So that is where I am, at this difficult, impossible crossroad of love. What do I do with my anger? I have to give it to God, and pray. I cannot make myself love. I can try, but it won´t be enough. I don´t have enough to give. I have to have faith that the Holy Spirit is in me, and working through me to do the things God asks us to do for the kingdom, that are not of this earth. I have to believe that He will work through me, and in me, to change who I am.

A saying that has helped me is, ¨All lives have the same value, no matter where they are going.¨ If I am going to believe in God, and what he says, I have to start with love, and the belief that every human being has the right to be loved because God loves them.

I am trying to love. Please pray for me in that. I am praying for you as well, that the love of God will abound radiantly in you, and that together, with our anger, we can come into a deeper understanding of who God is. And why we are here.