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I’m Not An Angry Person. I’m A Grieving Person.

“You’re such an angry person.”

People say that to me lately—but not anyone who really knows me.

Random strangers might lazily toss it off as social media shade designed to dismiss me when they don’t share my political or theological perspective. 

Sometimes the assertion is offered by a former friend or distant relative who isn’t comfortable with my volume or my directness.

No one who lives alongside me says that.

I’m not an angry person.

Bitterness has never been my default setting.

I’m actually pretty damn hilarious.

I’m also a person of love.

I love laughing deeply and hugging well and enjoying the moments I have here with people I love.

I love attending impromptu strobe light dance parties with my effervescent nine-year old daughter.

I love crafting the perfectly executed dad joke to fully horrify my high school son at the dinner table.

I love hearing the explosive sound of my wife’s laugh as I share with her my latest poor fashion decision or questionable food choice.

I love spending hours passionately creating the absolute perfect marinara—and then noticing how much I sound like my mother as I matter-of-factly proclaim as we eat: “It came good.”

I love working out until I’m so breathless that I involuntarily emit an expletive that startles the dog.

I love driving down the street with the windows down while attempting to hit the key change high note at the end of “Living On a Prayer”—and cracking myself up at how gloriously I’ve failed, while seeing in the rearview mirror the terror on the faces of those who assumed someone was being murdered.

When I travel through my day I show people simple kindness, realizing they may be starved for it.

I smile generously at strangers, knowing that most of them have a heavy grief that they keep just below the surface.

I ask people if they need help with a heavy box—and ask them if they’re sure, when their knee-jerk response is “no,” because I know how hesitant I am to accept help.

I scan the periphery of the room, looking for the eyes of people who seem to be just holding back tears—and try to somehow make sure they feel seen.

I look for the good in the world and try to leave people lighter than when I found them.

No, I’m not an angry person—I’m just a good and loving person who is grieving the lack of goodness and love I see in the place I call home, and in so many of the people I live alongside here.

I’m a person of compassion who simply can’t process the poverty of empathy and the abundance of cruelty I’m witnessing in people I used to think were like me.

I’m a person of deep faith, wondering why so many of my white Christian friends have become so silent in the face of the kind of inhumanity we were taught Jesus abhorred.

I’m an otherwise joyful human being who’s finding it difficult to fathom how hard some people work to damage other human beings, and this has tempered my joy greatly.

No, I’m not hateful—I just despise bigots, racists, religious hypocrites, and powerful people who prey on vulnerable human beings.

If I seem angry to you, you may be one of those people—or you may be one of the people silent right now.

Either way, that’s a you problem.

You can call me angry if it helps you feel better about your discomfort over my outspokenness, or if it keeps you from dealing with your apathy.

I’m actually really good.

Think I’ll go take a drive with the windows down.

Feel like I just might hit that high note this time.

“We gotta hold on, ready or not—you live for that fight when it’s ALL THAT YOU’VE GOT!”

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