It was a nice afternoon. Bekah and her husband were getting everyone ready to leave for a vacation. Once everyone was packed for the trip, Mike decided the lawn needed to be mowed. Why risk a nasty letter from the Homeowners Association? So he headed out to mow.
Bekah finished preparing dinner and setting the table. Mike wasn’t finished with mowing, so she went out front to get their mail. On her way back to the house, one of their children came out and asked her, “Mom, is dad okay?”
“I think he’s mowing the yard. What are you concerned about?”
“Well, I think he’s looking at the grass …”
Bekah replied, “What do you mean, ‘He’s looking at the grass’?”
“He’s like down on the ground looking at it really closely.”
Bekah knew that did not sound right. She went into the house and looked out their back door. Mike was lying face down in their backyard. She had one of her older children call 911, and she ran out to him. He was unresponsive, and so she started CPR. Soon the paramedics arrived, but after about an hour of trying to revive him, it was clear that he had died.
Bekah didn’t work outside the home. They had four children, ranging in age from 1½ to 16 years old. What now?
Reflecting back, Bekah remembers: “We were homeschooling, and I had all kinds of great plans for what we were going to do with that. I was angry that all these great plans that we had were falling apart. The vision that I had for what our family was supposed to be and how it was supposed to function wouldn’t work anymore. And I felt like the life that I wanted had been in some ways kind of stolen from me.”
“Stolen from me.” Bekah’s choice of verb was intentional. “I was mad at God because I felt like we were living a life that I thought honored Him. And I felt like He was not honoring us in exchange.” Where does she go from here?
Grieving and angry with God
Anger is not uncommon in grief. Sadness, fear, loneliness, and anger often get jumbled up in the experience of life after loss, especially after the loss of a spouse. And with anger we typically have two tendencies:
- We conclude that situations are unjust or unfair, because they challenge the way we think the world should operate.
- We are prone to assign blame to someone for the situation. When we’re angry about a death, it’s common to look to the ultimate one we might have expected to prevent the death: God.
Dave’s second wife died only a few years after their wedding. He says, “The first part of my life, I had some issues. My first marriage ended up in a divorce. And when I met Cheryl, I said, ‘Okay, we need to have a live-happily-ever-after marriage. God owes me that.’ When she died five years later, I said, ‘You didn’t live up to Your part of the bargain!’”
Gail had a similar type of response to the death of her husband: “Looking back, I mean, I’d have to say that part of that anger had to be angry at God, just because I was just so angry at the world and God’s in control of all the things that were happening.”
You can appreciate the logic: God’s in control of what happens in the world. He is supposed to care about us. So, when tragedy strikes, one has to wonder, “What’s up, God? Where were You? Why did You let this happen?”
Certainly, those are reasonable questions. Yet none of these people who confessed to being angry with God received a verbal reply from the Almighty. Is there a way to get answers to these types of questions?
Addressing anger with God while grieving
From a Christian perspective, the Bible is the written record of God’s character and His dealings with humanity. The Bible’s human writers were guided by the Lord to write what He wanted written. That’s why the Bible is also called “God’s Word.” It doesn’t answer all of our specific questions about events and experiences in our lives. But it does provide a framework for thinking through how we might live our lives in line with God’s design and purposes. Therefore, what God has revealed in the Bible is sufficient for helping us understand how we ought to respond to Him—including when we’re angry with Him because what’s happened seems so unfair or unnecessary. This is seen especially in the Bible’s book of Psalms.
So then, if we turn to Psalms, we learn:
(1) In their times of suffering, the psalmists went to God with honest prayers.
The psalmists, like King David, had experienced the goodness of God. Yet, in the midst of his suffering, he freely tells God about his confusion, pain, and frustration. In the psalmists’ prayers we read their heart-wrenching descriptions of what they went through. They let God know they were confused about why they had to go through times of intrusive suffering. They wondered out loud how long their trials would last—and what God was up to as they endured those trials. For example:
Why do you hide your face and forget our misery and oppression? Psalm 44:24
I cry aloud to the LORD; I lift up my voice to the LORD for mercy. I pour out before him my complaint; before him I tell my trouble. Psalm 142:1–2
The very fact that God had these types of prayers preserved in the Bible encourages us to pray in a similar manner when we’re suffering. Praying in a “similar manner,” however, requires us to understand another aspect of these prayers.
(2) The psalmists had two motivations for their prayers.
Something that is unique about these biblical prayers is what motivated the psalmists to pray them. First, they desired relief. They asked for mercy, for strength, and for an end to their difficulties. For example:
Turn to me and be gracious to me, for I am lonely and afflicted. Relieve the troubles of my heart and free me from my anguish. Psalm 25:16–17
But, secondly, they wanted God to be honored in how they responded to their suffering. Their prayers did not come with any demands that God conform to their life agendas. Voicing their frustration, confusion, and desperation to the Lord did not mean they were giving God an ultimatum. Instead, as eager as they were to experience relief from their suffering, they also knew that trusting God with the outcome was the best course of action. In the past God had shown Himself to be a compassionate, merciful Lord. And it was based on His track record that they wanted to come to Him with their dumbfounded frustration and concern. For example:
LORD, hear my prayer, listen to my cry for mercy; in your faithfulness and righteousness come to my relief. Psalm 143:1
Show me your ways, LORD, teach me your paths. Guide me in your truth and teach me, for you are God my Savior, and my hope is in you all day long. Remember, LORD, your great mercy and love, for they are from of old. Psalm 25:4–6
Rise up and help us; rescue us because of your unfailing love. Psalm 44:26
God is patient with His people, especially those who are struggling with sadness, confusion, and anger.
Bekah, Dave, and Gail learned this firsthand. As they thought about God’s faithfulness in the past, they realized it was worth coming to Him once again. Even with the anger. They did not need to pretend. Here’s how Bekah thought through it: “It’s important that I see that I’m feeling that way [angry], that I recognize it—and that I deal with it. Just like any emotion that we don’t deal with, it can fester and it can turn into something malignant, but it doesn’t have to be that way. To get beyond the anger is to take it to God and say, ‘This is where I feel wronged. This is where I feel things have gone awry and are not the way they should be.’ And I don’t think that God generally would push back with ‘No, it’s fine.’ He sees that there are things in this world that are wrong.”
She continues: “Anger is appropriate as a response to death, because death is a reminder that the world is not as it should be. That’s not the way God designed things to be. So in a way we have the chance to join with God and see the world’s brokenness. And God can use that to make us more sensitive to the ways that we can work against that brokenness, that we can align with Him in bringing restoration and healing out of that brokenness, because that’s His plan—to restore what’s been broken.”
It might take a while to process your anger. But it is important to do so rather than ignore it. Like the psalmists, go to the Lord with your pain and anger. You can—and should—be honest with Him.
Here are more psalms that express confusion, pain, and frustration to the Lord: Psalms 31, 55, 61, 71, 130. Read these psalms and trace the flow of thought in each one. Once you can see a pattern (repeated themes) emerging, use this template for your own prayers to God. It probably will help to talk with someone familiar with the Bible (like a pastor) who can help you with this process. You might consult the book Dark Clouds, Deep Mercy by Mark Vroegop.
You would also benefit from finding a GriefShare group to attend, either in person or online. As you view the videos, engage in the small-group discussions, and read through the participant guide, you will gain more and more insight into the challenges your loss has brought into your life—and how to respond to those challenges with the Lord’s help. Find a GriefShare group HERE.
