2020 Triptych pt.2 – These Chains that I Have Fashioned

“Of the Seven Deadly Sins, anger is possibly the most fun. To lick your wounds, to smack your lips over grievances long past, to roll over your tongue the prospect of bitter confrontations still to come, to savor to the last tooth-some morsel both the pain you are given and the pain you are giving back–in many ways it is a feast fit for a king. . . . “
– Frederick Buechner

Buechner’s quote doesn’t end there (hence the ellipsis). But that portion of it definitely resonated with me by the end of the summer of 2020. I had been wounded. And I was angry.

I was generally angry at the whole partisan mess in our country. And I was angry more specifically at a few people in particular who had hurt me personally. Unfortunately, even though that summer eventually came to an end, my anger did not.

I wish I was a better person, but the truth is that I held on to the hurt until it turned to hate.

At first, that hate made me feel good. I felt justified as I replayed the events again and again and again in my head. Clearly, I was the good guy in the story and “they” were the bad guys. I was right to feel the way I felt, and it feels good to be right.

But here’s the thing, the more and more I went over those grievances in my head, the worse I began to feel. Pick at a scab and the wound will take forever to heal.

After months of this, I came to realize that my pain was no longer stemming from those who had wronged me. The pain I was feeling was now coming from me, like a form of psychological self-harm.

I was holding grudges and harboring hate. I was pulling myself down deeper into the darkness every time I brought those grievances back to mind, every time I gave into those angry feelings. Honestly, it is frightening how easy it was to fall into that trap. I thought those feelings were my friends. On the surface, we got along well. I was completely unaware that those friendly feelings were entangling me and beginning to choke out my life.

Once I came to the realization of what was happening, I–of course–wanted it to stop; I wanted to be free. But hate is a hard web to work your way out of. Hate has a magnetic draw, like a gravitational force you can’t see but that pulls you down and keeps you from moving forward.

The full quote from Buechner is this:

“Of the Seven Deadly Sins, anger is possibly the most fun. To lick your wounds, to smack your lips over grievances long past, to roll over your tongue the prospect of bitter confrontations still to come, to savor to the last tooth-some morsel both the pain you are given and the pain you are giving back–in many ways it is a feast fit for a king. The chief drawback is that what you are wolfing down is yourself. The skeleton at the feast is you.”

I wanted to let go of the grudges I was gripping so tightly to. I wanted to break free from the hate that had taken root inside of me and wrapped its deadly fingers around my soul.

It was during that struggle that I wrote this song.

When I first played it for my wife, her response was, “I don’t think you should ever play that song for anyone else.” And I don’t blame her! She loves me and wants to protect me, and the simple fact is it sounds an awful lot like I am cussing in this song. Maybe I am. I mean, it doesn’t just sound like it, it kind of feels like it too.

But truly, this song is a prayer. And maybe cussing and praying aren’t mutually exclusive, especially when you are praying for God to take away the very thing in you that you know is killing you.

Either way, the song is quite literally a prayer. The lyrics in question are, “God, _____.” God, comma,  (verb) . It is a request for God to do something. I needed God to get rid of the hate in me and send it back to the place from which it came. So, I prayed, “God, take it away.” “Damn it to hell, God.” “Free me from the weight of these chains that I fashioned myself.”

Though it didn’t happen immediately, praying this prayer saved me. It’s not pretty, I know. But it is the best I could do. I had reached my lowest point and this prayer, this song, was my first feeble attempt to reach out and ask God to free me from the hate, to cleanse me of it, to save me from it.

And praise God that I can now look back, years after the fact, and say He is doing just that.

Credits

Words & Music: Bill Wolf