From restlessness to release (thanks to Tim McGraw)

If you’ve been following this series of posts (i.e., From abandonment to hope). The last post focused on how feeling abandoned leads one to a sense and perhaps even a lifestyle, or approach to life, of restlessness. To be a restless person, one feels like a spiritual vagabond. It’s the James 1:6 principle of having “two minds”.

For me at least, I cultivated this approach to life until I was almost 39 years old. I could see its effects in my life but felt powerless to change it deeply. Instead, I expressed internal power through an illegitmate way – ANGER!

Anger can become an addiction for the restless soul that has been abandoned. My anger was like molten lava that was flowing just under the surface of my soul. You only saw it raise its ugly head infrequently but it always had the capacity to erupt like Mt. Vesuvius. I knew that and it scared me.

How did I finally find release from my restlessness (and anger)?

Tim McGraw! Yep, blame it on a country song.

I was driving home one day in the summer of 2001 listening to Tim McGraw singing a song called Angry All the Time. I was singing the song (unconsciously really) and the Spirit of God snuck up on me. Yes, the Spirit can speak through a country song!

The extended lyrics are below. The phrase that worked me over was this:

“And you aint the only one who feels like this world left you far behind
I dont know why you gotta be angry all the time”

The abandonment language is in the first verse (i.e., feeling left behind).

And the sucker-punch is in the next verse, ” I dont know why you gotta be angry all the time.”

As I was singing this phrase the Lord brought my then six-year old daughter’s face to my mind’s-eye, and I imagined her looking up at me asking, “Daddy, why do have to be angry all the time?” What happened next was not pretty.

In a divine moment of soul-surgery the Spirit of God nailed me. He exposed my heart, an angry heart, and laid it open. I pulled off to the side of the road and wept hot tears of repentance before the Lord. Mercifully, the Lord released me of my anger as I poured it out to Him in that moment. It was gone. I could feel a cool cleansing descend upon me as the tears washed out the poison.

After pulling myself together, I asked myself this question, “Why have you been so angry?” To which the Spirit of God immediately impressed this phrase upon my soul: “Because you don’t know who your father is, the one who abandoned you before birth!”

Crap. I was busted!

The next post will take us from release to reconciliation.

So far, we’ve seen the wound: abandonment; which led me to restlessness; which lead to a release; which finally led to reconciliation.

Here are the lyrics to Angry All the Time (Tim McGraw)

Here we are
What is left of a husband and a wife with four good kids
Who have a way of gettin on with their lives
And Im not old but Im getting a whole lot older every day
Its too late to keep from goin crazy
Ive got to get away

The reasons that I cant stay dont have a thing to do with being in love
An I understand that lovin a man shouldnt have to be this rough
And you aint the only one who feels like this world left you far behind
I dont know why you gotta be angry all the time

Our boys are strong now the spittin image of you when you were young
I hope someday they can see past what you have become
And I remember every time I said Id never leave
But what I cant live with is memories of the way you used to be

The reasons that I cant stay dont have a thing to do with being in love
And I understand that lovin a man shouldnt have to be this rough
And you aint the only one who feels like this world left you far behind
I dont know why you gotta be angry all the time

Twenty years have came and went since I walked out of your door
I never quite made it back to the one I was before
And God it hurts me to think of you
For the light in your eyes was gone
An sometimes I dont know why this old world cant leave well enough alone

The reasons that I cant stay dont have a thing to do with being in love
And I understand that lovin a man shouldnt have to be this rough
You aint the only one who feels like this world left you far behind
I dont know why you gotta be angry all the time
I dont know why you gotta be angry all the time
I dont know why you gotta be angry all the time