Well… it’s like this. I lived most of my life, from a child onward, doing what I thought/knew I should do. Growing up in a stern household, and probably seeing the “get in trouble” examples of my siblings, I chose to do the “right thing” from childhood up until about 30. I received two spankings that I recall as a child – one about age 6 for being late back to the house (we had a family reunion to go to). The other was somewhere around age 10 for getting mad and breaking a croquet mallet. The second one cemented in me the need to avoid pain at all costs. However, I also learned (incorrectly) that I must suppress my anger and any other difficult feelings, and do what I am supposed to no matter how I feel. There’s way more to it than goes into this, but that’s the gist.
As an older teen/young adult, and becoming a Christian at 15, how this came out was that I did “whatever a good Christian would do”. So, I didn’t listen to secular music, didn’t smoke, didn’t drink, didn’t get in trouble, didn’t. I generally held my tongue. I even talked myself into believing things like: “A good Christian wouldn’t be angry about this. I want to be a good Christian, so I’m not angry.” Or, “A good Christian would be hurt by <blah>. I want to be a good Christian, so I’m not hurt by <blah>.” And so on.
While all this stuff was going into the toxic dump of suppressed feelings, I also hated God. What I knew was that God is love and God is good, but He’s just waiting for me to step out of line so He can punish me. I’ve never said this before to my family, but I also learned by my father’s example (I’m sorry Dad, I held on this anger for so long, and I have forgiven you. I know that you did the best you could, and that you loved me, even if I struggled to see it in my youth. I wish I had had the courage to share my honest self back then), that God is too busy for me most of the time, and that what He focuses on is what’s wrong in me. (I also learned along the way that sex is nasty and disgusting and not to be discussed, and that you should wait till marriage to save it for the one you love. But that’s another thing unto itself.)
So I hated God for His perceived lack of love, but I couldn’t admit that because there’s no way a good Christian could ever hate God. What to do – what to do? This is where the white-knuckles come in. I white-knuckled nearly all my Christian life, well nearly all my life, acting kind, while not feeling kind. Having certain thoughts, but saying others. Always denying and suppressing the anger, self-hatred, shame, hurt, despair, and depression I felt. I just grit my teeth and determined to “bottle it all up”, because a good Christian wouldn’t have these thoughts, feelings, nor attitudes. And as long as I held on tightly, I’d be fine. The more turbulent my life became, the tighter I held. And no one would know. I didn’t need to acknowledge that anything else was happening within me. Or so I thought. And that is how I came into these last few years, and most likely, how I came into this marriage.
D Helfrick 