“If you let anger into your life, you actually give Satan himself a door into your life.”

“Anger takes you into the very fires of hell.”

“You will be answerable to God because of this.”

Anger. The entire sermon was about anger. Sitting in the front row, I listened to a man tell me why anger is so dangerous, so destructive, and so contrary to what Jesus taught. We cannot give our anger to God, he said. If we could, we would not need Jesus. We need a savior because anger is deadly.

It was powerful. Honest. True.

I thought it was a really good sermon.

Fifteen minutes later, I stood alone in the lobby waiting for Alissa to finish talking to what she hoped to be new friends of ours. These were people we had never met. Extroverts. This is kind of our thing. A few minutes earlier, I had been talking with someone about Beverly, my biological mother, whose years of abuse left me indebted to anger I never asked for. Church people always told me to let it go and let God. I heard that line for years. I do not believe it anymore. You do not just let go of years of pain because someone tells you to. Either you learn to carry it, or it buries you under the pain and heartache. But if you can carry it well? That is its own kind of victory, making you aware of and in control of yourself when emotions want to get the best of you.

Anger is something I have learned to handle in the last few years. Before, I would let all my emotions get the best of me. Today, staying quiet is the practice. Letting the other person have their moment. If you are passive-aggressive about it, you look sane, and they look crazy. I would rather be in control of powerful emotions than look or be perceived as unhinged. Taking charge of your emotions? That is not a sign of weakness. That is restraint. It took lots of painful years to get here, but I am so grateful. Those hard lessons, including how not to be passive-aggressive about them, taught me well.

My friend patted my shoulder, hugged me, and left, letting me sit with what I shared. Even for me, it was a lot.

That’s when she found me.

She did not come to talk. She came to unload. I do not remember every word. I remember the volume. I remember the accusations. I remember the tears in her eyes, the kind that told you her emotions were in charge, and that any logic had already left the building. I stood there waiting for a pause, waiting for my turn to speak, but the pause never came.

Then she walked away. There was so much I wanted to say, like how sorry I was that she was hurt. How I really wanted to understand what happened, where this was coming from, and why she believed what she believed. I never got the chance. No one heard what she said. No one saw it happen. Right after a sermon on anger, I became the target of someone else’s.

So I did what I had been taught to do. My concern went straight to the senior pastor via email. I did not have the time or emotional capacity to talk about it in the moment. My expectations were spelled out, easy to understand, and simple. I had questions and asked him to address all of them. Instead, after a week of back-and-forth emails, he told me her behavior was acceptable and that she had said what needed to be said.

What?

An hour earlier, he had stood in front of the church and talked about the destructive power of anger. About how it opens a door to the devil. About how it pulls people toward hell. Now he tells me in an email that her anger was justified. Acceptable, even. His sermon was true. Until it became inconvenient. At least for him. Choosing to let it still be true for me? That was something I needed to sit with.

For two years, I have turned that moment over to Jesus. Could I have handled it differently? Should I have? Maybe. But I was never given a chance to find out. She would not let me speak. He would not call it wrong. Sometimes that is what stays with you most. Not just what someone did, but what their leader allowed.

Integrity means figuring out how to carry it. Figuring out how to carry this one.

That is the work I’m still doing.