Thoughts from the blind…

While alone in my deer blind the other day, there was a thought I couldn’t stop thinking about…

Do not hand your heart over to the same anger that hurt you.

Some of our anger has a story. Someone betrayed our trust. Someone spoke words we still hear years later. Someone who should have protected us became the person we needed protection from. Those wounds are real, and God does not ask us to pretend they were small.

But what is that hurt becoming inside us?

Sometimes we hear something familiar coming out of our own mouths. The sharp words. The way we shut someone down. The way people we love grow quiet around us. We recognize something we never wanted to carry forward.

If we are not careful, we can end up bleeding on people who never cut us. We can make someone else pay for a wound they did not cause. We can punish the people who love us for what someone else did to us.

Sometimes we hold on to anger because it feels stronger than grief. It feels safer to be furious than to admit, “I needed you. I trusted you. You hurt me.” 

Sometimes it feels like protection. If we stay guarded enough, nobody will catch us off guard again. Sometimes we are afraid that releasing our anger means somebody gets away with what they did.

God knows what happened. We do not have to stay angry to keep the truth alive.

But we do need to be honest with ourselves. Have I started speaking to people the way someone once spoke to me? Does my family have to measure my mood before they can relax? Am I responding to this person, in this moment, or to a wound they had nothing to do with?

Those questions sting.

We can deserve compassion for what happened to us and still need to repent for how we are treating others.

James 1:20 says, …the anger of man does not produce the righteousness of God.

Even when our grievance is real, anger cannot be trusted to choose our words and lead our relationships.

Giving this to God begins with an honest prayer… “Lord, I am still hurt. I want them to understand what they did. Part of me wants them to hurt, too. Please help me. I do not want to keep passing this pain to people I love.”

Then we practice that surrender. We pause before sending the message. We apologize without making our pain an excuse. We ask for help from someone who can walk with us. When the memory returns, we bring it back to God.

Forgiveness can include firm boundaries. Trust takes more than an apology to rebuild. We can give God our anger and still refuse to give someone access to hurt us again.

Jesus knows betrayal. He knows cruelty. We can bring Him what happened to us and what has happened within us since. There is mercy for both.

Maybe today the prayer is simply this…

“Lord, heal what someone else wounded, and forgive what I have wounded while carrying it.”

Do not hand your heart over to the same anger that hurt you. Put it in the hands of the One who can heal it.

PS: That’s the yearling that kept me company that afternoon…