I spent thirty minutes yelling at God on a Tuesday. Not praying. Yelling. Loud, heated, the kind of conversation where if a neighbor heard it through the wall they would have called someone.
I had no filter the first nine months after Caleb died. I said things to people I should not have said. I said things to God I never imagined saying. If you had told me five years earlier that I would stand in my house and scream accusations at the ceiling, I would not have believed you. But grief does not ask permission. It does not consult your theology first.
People in church act like anger toward God is blasphemy. Whose rule is that? Not God’s. That expectation comes from people who have never had a hurt deep enough to rattle their core. They want composed faith. Grateful faith. Faith that smiles through the service and says “God is good, all the time” without flinching. I used to be that guy. I am not that guy anymore.
I will never meet my son’s future bride. That hit me one day out of nowhere. Not just that Caleb is gone, but that the daughter I would have gained through him is gone too. An entire life that was supposed to unfold, erased. I did not even know I was holding that expectation until grief ripped it out of my hands and I realized what it was. Sometimes you do not know why you are angry until you are already screaming.
Job screamed. He said he loathed his own life and would give free rein to his complaint. The man lost his children, his health, his wealth, and his friends showed up to tell him it was his fault. He yelled at God and God did not strike him down. God answered him. Not with an explanation. Not with a fix. But He answered.
David wrote, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” and those words ended up in Scripture. God did not edit them out. He kept them. The Bible is full of people who screamed at their Creator and God’s response was not punishment. It was presence.
I think about it like this. When a child gets hurt, they come running into the house crying and angry. They are not rationally blaming their parent. But the parent is supposed to make everything okay, and everything is not okay, and the child does not have the words for the gap between those two things. So they scream.
That is what I do. I scream at my Father because He is supposed to be able to fix this and He has not. I know He can. I do not understand why He will not. And I refuse to pretend I am fine with that just to keep up appearances in front of people who have never buried their child.
Here is what I have learned. Concealing your anger from God is pointless. He already knows. And keeping it from Him damages the relationship the same way it would with anyone. If you had a close friend who only talked about easy things and refused to bring up what was actually eating them alive, you would not call that close. You would call that surface. How is it different with God?
I still yell sometimes. It is less frequent now, but it still happens. I kicked an Amazon box so hard once it hit the wall and I was shocked it did not leave a mark. I have slammed doors. I have had the kind of arguments with God where I am pacing and gesturing like He is standing in the room with me.
I am not proud of all of it. But I am not ashamed of it either. It is the most honest my faith has ever been.
I also talk to Him without anger. I read His Word. I listen. Both things are true. The yelling and the listening. The fury and the faith. If your theology cannot hold both of those at the same time, your theology is too small for what grief actually does to a person.
If you are sitting in your anger right now, afraid that God will reject you for it, He will not. Job is proof. David is proof. The psalms are full of people who said worse than you are thinking. Go ahead. He can take it.
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