A Ramble About Anger and Discipline

I realized today that I am angry. Nothing which happened today caused it, nor anything which happened yesterday. I've been struggling with this anger for a long time, and I didn't realize until today that I was still struggling with it. I think I've known about it for a long time, but have done everything within my power to ignore it and pretend it doesn't exist.



This anger is really about much of the way my life has gone, with one particular incident being the focal point. I realized today that I have never dealt with the anger that incident caused. I know now that I couldn't have dealt with it when it happened because of my Asperger's, and so it has just festered within over the last almost twenty years only to rear its head as jealousy, or inexplicably being put on edge.



This particular incident hurt me terribly. It felt like a betrayal, and like I was being thrown away. It completely disrupted my life and my future plans and was the cause of a great deal of personal humiliation. As far as the profession I had wanted to pursue, it trashed it entirely. It's been in my dreams more and more now, and I couldn't put my finger on why.



I think I now know why. I never dealt with the feelings it caused in any way. Having Asperger's means that your feelings don't process in real time, when the cause of them is happening. At least, that's one of the things it meant for me. It was only a couple of years ago that I was able to process through an event from my early childhood that caused me a great deal of pain, and this after my treatments.



What's worse is that this anger and pain has been coming in between the Lord and I, and, without understanding why, I had been pushing away from Him while at the same time wanting nothing more than for Him to be closer. When I would attempt to go deeply into prayer, I knew that He had not changed in His love for me, and yet I was fearful of approaching Him without knowing why.



To make matters more confusing, I have understood for a little while now as to why He allowed or caused those things to happen in my life, and I wouldn't go back to change them for anything. The best things that have ever happened in my life like my wife, my children, my service as a priest, and still other things have been either the direct or indirect results of those hurts and pains. It confused me as to why I would still be angry about it when I understood some of the reasons for it and that it was His mercy which caused it to work out the way that it did. He actually blessed me because of the painful things that made me so angry. But this undealt-with anger and hurt was poisoning my relationship with the Lord, and also poisoning how I saw some of my brothers and sisters in Christ.



Then today this thought entered my mind. The child who is disciplined by the parent tends to be angry with the parent for disciplining him or her at the time. Discipline can take many forms. There is the punitive side of discipline, where we've done something wrong and are punished for it. But that's not what I'm referring to. I'm referring to when a parent has to tell a child "no." Or when a parent has to make a child do chores or tasks that they loath. When a parent has to make the child go to school but forbid them to go to the party that they want to be at. This is also discipline. And unlike the punitive side, it is far more likely to make the child angry with the parent because they see the discipline as unfair.



There are times when God uses a punitive form of discipline. It is not as often as people like to think, but it does happen. But the kind of discipline He uses far more is this second kind as He tries to school us and raise us as the kind of people He wants us to be. In my case, it made me just as angry as the disciplined child because I saw it as unfair, but I had no emotional outlet at the time for dealing with it, and I think I have also not wanted to admit that I was angry with God for it; that I have wanted to shout at Him "it's not fair!" regardless of how I was actually feeling. How can you honestly accuse God of being unjust when you know that He is anything but? So, on top of the Asperger's, I buried it as deep as possible without knowing what I was doing, but in so doing like radioactive waste it leaked out of its container and seeped up through the ground to the surface of my feelings.



I know that God understands my anger and frustration. I think most good parents do understand their child's frustration with discipline. He doesn't love me any less. He's not so insecure that He can't take the juvenile anger. And I do now understand some of the reasons for all of it, not the least of which is my own growth and maturity and movement towards Him. Now, I just have to allow myself to be flawed, and childish, and honest with those feelings that occurred then, even if it's not how I'm feeling now about it.