Rage (Patreon)

I discovered recently that my family is dysfunctional. 

When I was a child, I learned a family member was dangerous. I was coached how to excuse myself from being alone in a room with him, told to go find my mom if he made me uncomfortable. I was tutored in the necessary means of protecting myself from a man we kept around children.

He was a pedophile. And we allowed him to remain. 

Sometimes the anger bubbles up too hotly for me to know what to do with. I feel guilty, because everyone else seems to have moved on, seems to have accepted his claims of being washed clean by Jesus. When I toss and turn at night and think of him, think of the other men we keep protected in our family after their physical abuse towards women, I can’t help but feel a hot fire slip onto my tongue.

I don’t know how to act when I see them. Others say that it isn’t our place to need an apology. If things have moved on between the abuser and the victim, then we should, too. 

But why have we moved on? Because we’re lead to believe an unfounded statement and a baseless promise of being better?

Within the Christian community, we are taught to forgive and forget. We are delivered verses and sermons to curb our inner voice, to chain down the whispers that say this is wrong. 

I am angry on behalf of that voice. My anger is trying to keep me alive.

I have the right to my anger. And I have a right to step out of dysfunction and learn better means of coping. 

That won’t include keeping pedophiles and wife beaters in my life.