Is it OK for a good girl to get angry with God? Well, that’s where I’m at today, and I feel like God is giving me permission to share my story with you.

Prefer to listen? Here’s the podcast version on Heart in a Drawer, my podcast for adult children of divorce.

Season 3, Episode 7 (Number 68)

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Is It OK for a Good Girl to Get Angry with God?

If you had asked me this question at age 10, 20, 30, or even 40, I would have struggled to answer in the affirmative.

But in this hard, hard, hard year of so much hurt and injustice, I’m now able to say Yes, it is OK for a good girl to get angry with God – as long as she doesn’t stay angry forever.

What Being a Good Girl Cost Me

Ask anyone who has known me for a long time. I’m considered a good girl. My nickname in grade school – a private Christian school – was Miss Perfect. I won all of the Bible trivia challenges on Fridays, even beating my best friend, the pastor’s daughter. So I’ve been a Bible nerd and generally well-behaved girl for as long as I can remember, and I have a photographic memory.

Last night one of those photographic memories popped up, complete with all the feels. In fifth grade, I wore headgear to correct a bad overbite. But I have a very small mouth with very large teeth. The bar that arched upward cut into my tongue when I closed my mouth. I kept my mouth slightly open during the day so it wouldn’t hurt, but I couldn’t control my overnight jaw movements.

Night after night, the bar sliced a little deeper into my tongue. I was a 10-year-old good girl taught to keep quiet and not complain, a people-pleaser to the max. So I shut my eyes as the steel bar slid into the deepening grooves, while hot tears trickled out and down the sides of my face.

One morning, the pain was finally too much to bear. I quietly mentioned the situation to my mom. She looked angry when she had me open my mouth wide and inspected the deep gashes on my tongue. I thought I was in trouble for something, especially when a few hours later, she was standing in the orthodontist’s office alongside my dad. They were almost never in the same room together after their messy divorce.

Surely I did something wrong, I thought, but I didn’t understand why – because good girls often blame themselves for things that were never their fault.

I noticed even the orthodontist’s eyes held fear when he looked into my mouth. His eyes also held pity. With two quick clips from a large pair of pliers, the bar was gone. No more deep cuts without anesthetic. However, the deep grooves are still in my tongue decades later – a reminder of the cost of not speaking up.

Good girls pay high costs when they don't speak up about the hurts or injustices they experience. #emotionalhealth #traumarecovery #healing
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Embracing Anger as a Good Girl

In this year of recovering from a painful divorce, betrayal trauma, and decades of emotional abuse, I have learned that anger is one of the good, healthy, and necessary stages of grief. I spent months working through my anger toward the people who hurt me – and believe me, there was an enormous load to process. While listening to angry songs, I screamed my grief, and a few carefully controlled fires in my fire pit really helped too.

From January onward, I poured out my anger toward evil, cruel, malicious people. But it wasn’t until June that I began expressing my anger toward God.

After a horrible triggering incident, I ran out onto the country road where I have prayed so many times. I screamed out at the gate I mention in the Sunbeams chapter of my new book. I wailed, “God, I don’t understand! You could have stopped this! You promised me and you haven’t answered! It’s not fair!” Then I sobbed and sobbed as the gravel pushed into my thighs, since I was sitting cross-legged on the ground.

As I walked back home with snot and tears covering my swollen face, I felt strangely better. Not because I had yelled at the God I had trusted since I was a little girl. No, because I was finally getting that anger out and directing it where it belonged – onto a God who can handle anything and everything we throw at him.

Why Anger with God Is OK

I want to state an important truth:

It is good theology to get angry at God for things he could change.

Why? Because God IS in charge of everything! If you believe in God’s sovereignty, that’s good theology.

The actual, real, unmutable truth is this: God COULD change it, take the pain away, switch the situation, reverse the curse, and destroy our enemies, because he’s in charge of everything. Simply read the first two chapters of Job for biblical proof of this.

But when he doesn’t exercise justice in the timing we prefer, it’s no wonder even good girls get angry.

As I write in the Angry Thoughts chapter of my book Transforming Your Thought Life, the four emotions tied to anger are hurt, fear, frustration, and injustice. For me in my struggles this year, the main problems are hurt and injustice.

Another case in point. The ONLY piece of mail addressed to my ex that still arrives in my mailbox is sent from the place where my ex feeds his addiction. It’s also where the wicked woman who helped destroy my marriage earns her living. These two have chosen to live just two mailboxes down the road, within sight from my driveway.

Guess what arrived in the mail yesterday? The monthly newsletter he claims he’s asked them to change three times. But it still keeps coming to my house.

WHY?!?

In my anger based on deep hurt and injustice, and with no anesthesia either, I complained to God. I said, “You could change this. It’s just a little thing. I don’t understand why you don’t. This doesn’t even feel like love.”

In that moment with hot tears streaming down my face, I did not feel God’s wrath, though of course I deserve that just like any other sinner does (more good theology). Instead, I felt his presence – I felt seen by him, and this gave me a small measure of comfort.

Is it OK for a good girl (or guy) to get angry with God? Explore this tough subject with me here. #honestfaith #anger #angry #struggles
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