When Calm Isn’t Peace and Control Isn’t Healing
Refrain from anger, leave rage alone; do not fret yourself; it leads only to evil.
- From Psalm 137
For many years, Reflectionary has been my standing place between Scripture and the real world. It became a companion through all the seasons of change — some radiant, some raw. But life has deepened, and the story that once flowed quietly between the lines now has its own home elsewhere. Reflectionary will stay here, where it began — steady, familiar, and honest — even as newer writing explores how faith, pain, and recovery all braid together in ways I never saw coming.
I have lived long enough to learn that rage rarely announces itself.
It hides under layers of competence, self-control, and charm. For years, I thought of myself as calm and composed. People said so. But beneath that surface was something smoldering — the slow, silent burn of old injustices, unspoken resentments, and slights left unresolved.
Since around 2010, the embers would flare. I would find myself in stretches of darkness when, if I’m honest, I didn’t like anyone very much. Every small unfairness at work, every misunderstanding among friends or family, felt like one more grain of sand on an already heavy mountain. That’s how small-t traumas behave: they collect. And if you never clear them, they harden into something that looks and feels like rage.
The Psalm doesn’t tell us not to feel anger. It tells us not to feed it. “Refrain from anger” is not denial — it’s direction. To refrain is to take hold of the reins. Anger can serve truth if it’s harnessed, named, and brought to light. But if left to wander unattended, it leads, as the verse says, “only to evil.”
For me, that meant learning to talk about it. To face it. To see the smolder for what it was and not pretend it was incense. The hard work of healing begins there: naming what burns, and then letting the breath of God cool it into understanding.
Some stories belong here; others have grown into a larger telling. If you’ve found meaning in these reflections, you may also wish to visit the continuing journey at Forty-Five Winters — but this page will remain a quiet archive of the years that prepared the ground for that story to grow.
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