When I first met Kayleena, she did not seem to have an angry bone in her body. She could find the silver lining in almost anything and find something good in just about anyone. Even when someone hurt her, disappointed her, or treated her poorly, she usually found some reason for why they acted the way they did. She might get irritated or put off for a little while, but it usually passed pretty quickly.
For a long time, I admired that about her, and I still do. Her compassion, tenderness, and ability to look past someone’s worst moments are some of the things I love most about her. But over time I started to see that some of what looked like incredible patience was also Kayleena being really good at swallowing pain. I did not have the words for it then, but I can see now how closely suppressed anger and healing would eventually become connected for her.
I rarely saw anger. She would pull back instead, get quiet, keep things inside, find a reason for why the other person acted that way, and often give them another chance before really letting herself admit how much something had hurt her.
There was actually a point when I wanted her to get angry. Not bitter, raging, or consumed by it. I just wanted her to know that if something was wrong, she was allowed to feel like it was wrong. Every hurt did not need an immediate silver lining, and she did not have to go straight from being hurt to trying to understand the person who hurt her.
Over the past year, that has started to change. I have seen anger in her that I rarely saw before, especially as some family relationships have become strained, distant, or just silent. Oddly enough, some of that anger has gotten stronger as she has really started working on forgiveness.
Kayleena wrote months ago about how strange that anger felt in Is Anger During Healing Normal? Why Feeling Angry Can Be a Sign of Growth. At the time, she was realizing that anger did not necessarily mean she was going backward. It could mean she was going deeper. Watching that continue has helped me understand the next part a little differently. Recognizing the anger is one step, and learning what to do with it is another.
Our challenge now is not teaching her how to get angry. It is learning what to do with that anger now that she finally lets herself feel it.
Sometimes Not Being Angry Is Not the Same as Being at Peace
Peace and stuffing your feelings can look a lot alike from the outside. Real peace can look at something painful, admit what happened, grieve it, learn from it, and eventually let it go. Stuffing it down skips a lot of that. The hurt gets pushed somewhere deeper and life keeps moving.
Kayleena got really good at keeping life moving. Long before all of this family conflict, she described herself as someone who kept giving people second chances and forgiving them even when it came at a cost to herself. She believed people could change and often kept giving grace after she had already been hurt.
There is something beautiful about that kind of heart, but there is also a problem when you try so hard to find the good in everyone else that you stop letting yourself admit the bad things that happened to you. Sometimes anger is the part of us that finally says, That hurt. That was not okay. I mattered in that situation too.
Ephesians 4:26 does not tell us to never get angry. Scripture makes room for anger while also warning us about what we do with it, and that difference has become really important for both of us.
The Hardest Part Has Been What Hasn’t Happened
A lot has been said over the past couple of years, and some of it has been painful. But I think one of Kayleena’s biggest hurts now comes from what has not been said.
Her life has changed a lot since she moved out. She has worked through anxiety, depression, old family problems, counseling, boundaries, faith, recovery, relationships, and eventually marriage. Some family members strongly disagreed with those choices, especially her relationship and marriage to me. They have every right to disagree.
What is harder for her to understand is how disagreement turned into distance. People who once meant so much can suddenly feel almost gone. Big moments can come and go with little or no acknowledgment from people who once said they loved you deeply. You can share pieces of your new life with people you still love and get almost nothing back. Maybe the hardest part is hearing that someone cares while seeing very little interest in the life you are actually living.
Silence leaves a lot of questions with nowhere to go. There is nothing to work through if the other person will not talk, and one person cannot build reconciliation alone. No amount of explaining can make someone acknowledge a marriage, celebrate your happiness, ask how you are doing, or simply say, “I still disagree with you, but I love you and want to know about your life.”
Eventually disappointment can turn into anger, and I understand why.
Anger Is Not the Enemy
There was a time when seeing Kayleena get angry would have actually made me feel a little better because it would have meant she was not turning every painful feeling back on herself. Now that the anger is here, my role as her husband has changed.
It would be wrong for me to tell her she should not feel it. There are real reasons for some of that anger. But there is also a big difference between supporting her while she is angry and helping feed the anger, and that part has challenged me too.
When someone hurts the woman I love, protection comes naturally. The old neighborhood Greg would have wanted to lash out, get even, and make sure whoever hurt her felt something in return. A later version of me had moved past that, but not nearly as far as I thought. I did not want to “get them back” anymore. Instead, I wanted to argue the case, correct the record, explain exactly why they were wrong, make them understand what they were doing to her, and somehow get them to see what seemed so obvious to me.
Neither one of those responses is where I am today. Romans 12:19 tells us to leave vengeance to the Lord. I am learning that means more than just not getting even. I also cannot force someone to understand, feel convicted, apologize, or change. I cannot make someone face things they do not want to face, and I cannot make someone stay in a conversation they have already decided to walk away from.
What I can control is how I respond. For Kayleena, that means being there while she works through it. I can listen when she is angry, hold her when the silence hurts, pray with her, remind her of what is true, and help protect the peace in our home without becoming the prosecutor for every wrong done to her.
We were actually laughing about this at dinner the other night. There I was, Greg Mack from Riverside, telling my wife, “We don’t need to know why. We need to bless them. We need to do what the Lord wants us to do, not what we feel like doing.”
Seriously? Who is this guy?
I grew up a punk from the Riverside neighborhood, a train hop away from downtown Buffalo, hanging out at the top of the grain mills and skipping school. The younger version of me would probably look at the guy sitting at that dinner table talking about blessing people who hurt us and wonder what happened to him.
Christ happened. And apparently God has an amazing sense of humor.
That does not mean I suddenly enjoy being mistreated or that I do not care when my wife gets hurt. Those old instincts still show up. I still get angry and still want to make people understand. The difference is that I am learning I do not have to act on every feeling that shows up.
Sometimes obedience means holding back. Sometimes protecting my wife means sitting beside her instead of going after the people who hurt her. Sometimes strength means blessing someone when everything in me wants to tell them exactly what I think. And sometimes the best thing I can pray is, I cannot change them. Lord, You deal with them. Help me deal with me.
We May Never Know Why
This may be one of the biggest lessons I am finally starting to get.
For a long time, I wanted to know why. Why did they say that? Why react that way? Why not answer? Why not meet? Why did disagreement have to turn into this much distance? How can someone say they love Kayleena and then ignore things that clearly mean so much to her?
I kept thinking that if I could understand the reason, maybe it would all make more sense. Maybe it would, but we may never get that answer.
This is not a brand-new lesson for us. Kayleena wrestled with the same thing in Healing From Childhood Wounds: Choosing Who I Become, where she wrote about learning that getting answers might help your mind but does not undo what happened. We have talked and written about unanswered questions before.
The difference now is having to actually live it. Even if someone came to us tomorrow with an explanation, there is no guarantee we would walk away satisfied. It might make perfect sense to them and no sense at all to us. We could disagree with it, wonder if we were hearing the whole story, or come up with five more questions after hearing the first answer.
At some point, chasing the why can become another way of staying stuck in the very thing we say we are trying to let go of.
I am further along with this than Kayleena is right now, and that is okay. Healing does not happen at the same pace for everyone. She still wants answers to some questions that I am starting to believe may never be answered.
That difference has also been teaching me more about what leadership in our marriage really looks like. I wrote earlier in Watching Someone Heal from a Controlling Relationship that leadership is not about directing someone’s life. It is about helping create a place where they can safely grow. I believed that when I wrote it, and living it with Kayleena has taught me even more about what that actually looks like.
She said something to me recently that has stuck with me. I have to paraphrase because I do not remember her exact words, but basically she said maybe I had to go through the things I went through, and work through the things God has been working on in me, so I could be here now helping and guiding her as the leader of our home.
I do not take that to mean I am here to fix her. Kayleena does not need fixing. Leading our home does not mean I tell her what she should feel, how quickly she should heal, or exactly what she needs to do. What I can do is share some of what I have learned, including plenty of lessons I learned the hard way.
Sometimes I have thoughts I think might help, but I am learning not to assume that just because I have something to say means she needs to hear it right then. There are times I just ask, “Can I share what I’m thinking?” or “Do you want to hear my thoughts on this?” That little question can make a big difference.
Other times there really is nothing I need to say. When my wife is hurting badly, the best thing I can do may not be giving her a Bible verse, explanation, solution, or plan. Sometimes I need to pull her close, let her cry if she needs to, and just be quiet.
There are times leadership means speaking up, offering advice, or helping turn our attention back toward God. Other times it means holding your wife and saying absolutely nothing.
My job is not to push Kayleena past questions she still has just because I may be further along with some of mine. I can walk beside her, share what I have learned when it helps, and remind her that our peace cannot depend on someone else finally giving us an explanation that makes sense to us.
Sometimes the answer to “Why did they do that?” may have to be, “I don’t know, and I can still move forward without knowing.” There is a lot of freedom in that.
We Are Learning to Stop “Shoulding” on People
Something else we have been talking about lately is what we jokingly call “shoulding” on people. They should call. They should apologize. They should ask how she is doing. Her family should acknowledge the marriage, care that she is happy, recognize how much she has grown, and respond differently when she reaches out.
I may believe every one of those things, but should does not change is.
When I keep thinking about what somebody should have done, I am arguing in my own head with something that already happened. Saying they should act differently today really does not change much either because I am still trying to control something I cannot control.
Their behavior belongs to them. So do their choices, silence, fears, opinions, assumptions, mistakes, and whatever comes from those choices. We can disagree with what they do without spending every day wishing reality was different.
This is where one of the biggest lessons from recovery has really started to hit home for me: accepting the things I cannot change. And one of the biggest things I cannot change is them.
Acceptance does not mean I approve. It does not mean I think something was right, loving, healthy, or fair. It just means I am accepting what is actually happening instead of wearing myself out wishing it was something else.
They may change someday. I pray those relationships change and hope real conversations eventually happen. But our peace cannot depend on it.
Forgiveness Has Actually Made Some of the Anger Stronger
You might think that really working on forgiveness would immediately make the anger start going away. For us, sometimes it has done the opposite.
Once you stop minimizing something, you have to admit how much it actually hurt. Some of Kayleena’s strongest anger has come up while she has been seriously working on forgiveness, and I think part of the reason is pretty simple: she cannot give something to God that she is still explaining away.
We have written a lot about forgiveness already, so I do not think we need to explain the whole thing again every time. For us, forgiveness does not mean saying something was fine, trusting someone again before trust has been rebuilt, forgetting what happened, or taking down boundaries that still need to be there. What matters here is that Kayleena has had to stop minimizing some hurts before she can really release them.
She can love someone and still be angry, pray for someone and still miss them, forgive someone while admitting trust has been damaged, and give resentment to God without pretending the behavior that caused the boundary no longer matters.
Romans 12:18 has become really important to us: “If possible, so far as it depends on you, live peaceably with all.” That part matters: so far as it depends on you.
Kayleena is responsible for her part. I am responsible for mine. Together we are responsible for what we allow into our marriage and our home. What other people choose to do is theirs.
I Don’t Want Her to Become Hard
My concern has changed. I am not worried anymore that Kayleena will never get angry. Some of this anger probably needed to come out years ago. What I do not want is for it to take away one of the best parts of who she has always been.
This is another place where something we wrote earlier still matters. In You Can Leave Fear Behind Without Leaving Love Behind, I wrote that healing from control does not mean we have to turn the people who hurt us into monsters. We can be free and still keep a soft heart.
That is becoming even more personal now. I do not want people who walk away from Kayleena to teach her to stop loving deeply. I do not want someone’s refusal to understand her to make her stop trying to understand others. And I do not want disappointment after disappointment to turn a compassionate woman into a cynical one.
Most of all, I do not want people who may honestly believe they are protecting her to end up creating a harder, less trusting, less joyful version of the woman they say they love. That would be one more hurt.
Their choices may change the relationship. Their actions may affect how much access is healthy or whether trust can ever be rebuilt. But they do not get to decide who Kayleena becomes.
There Is a Difference Between Soft and Unprotected
Having a soft heart does not mean going back to having no protection. Kayleena has spent a lot of her life giving people a lot of grace while asking for very little in return. When you have spent years explaining, forgiving, trying again, and worrying about everybody else’s feelings, boundaries can feel mean at first.
That does not mean they are mean.
You can love someone and still recognize that certain behavior cannot keep having access to your life. You can be compassionate without ignoring what is happening. Forgiving someone does not mean volunteering to be hurt the same way over and over.
That is the Kayleena I hope comes out of this season. Not the woman who starts stuffing everything again, and not someone who becomes bitter and hard. I want to see the woman who can say, “What happened hurt me. I am angry about it. I love you. I forgive you. And I will not keep taking part in something that is unhealthy for me.”
All of those things can be true at the same time. That is growth.
Silence Does Not Get the Final Word
Unanswered questions are hard because our minds naturally try to fill in the blanks. We can start wondering whether people care, whether saying something positive about our life would feel like they are approving choices they disagree with, or whether real communication will ever happen again.
Kayleena and I cannot answer those questions for other people, and the healing we are working on needs us to stop trying. Their silence does not have to become our daily conversation. Whatever story someone chooses to believe about us does not mean we have to spend our lives trying to change our part in their story.
Maybe one of the hardest parts of acceptance is letting people be where they are without constantly trying to pull them to where we think they should be.
We can leave the door open without standing in the doorway waiting.
My Job as Her Husband Has Changed
Earlier in all of this, I thought protecting Kayleena meant fighting harder for answers. I wanted meetings, conversations, explanations, and chances for people to really hear her. I wanted them to meet me, question some of what they believed, see our relationship for themselves, and see the woman standing in front of them instead of the story they had already created about her.
Part of me would still welcome those conversations, but I just do not believe our peace depends on them anymore.
My responsibility is not to make her family understand our marriage. My job is to love my wife well, and that means I have to be careful not to let my own frustration feed hers.
If Kayleena is trying to give resentment to God, I cannot keep picking it back up and handing it to her again. Supporting her boundaries does not mean making bitterness part of our home, and defending my wife does not mean turning every dinner conversation into another court case.
Instead, I can help us look at what is actually happening right in front of us: our marriage, our home, our faith, the work God is doing in both of us, the peace we have, the people who are here, and the joy already around us.
There is too much life in front of us to spend all of it looking backward.
I Want Her Anger to Become Something Better
James 1:19–20 tells us to be quick to listen, slow to speak, and slow to anger because human anger does not produce what God wants from us. That does not mean anger cannot teach us anything.
Kayleena’s anger has shown her that some things mattered more than she used to let herself admit. It has shown her how often she stuffed painful feelings, where stronger boundaries were needed, and how much hurt she used to explain away.
Now comes the next part. Anger can turn into better judgment, courage, boundaries, prayer, grief, and compassion that is no longer blind. Eventually, with God’s help, it can become peace.
What I do not want is for anger to become who she is.
The woman I met who always looked for the good in people is still there. I do not want her to get that softness back by going back to ignoring her own hurt. I want something better and healthier for her.
She can still look for the good without pretending the bad never happened. She can love people deeply and still know where her responsibility ends and theirs begins. She can forgive without saying what happened was okay. She can feel anger without being ashamed of it and eventually let it go without feeling like she lost.
That is not becoming harder. That is becoming whole.
Maybe one of the strangest parts of healing is that the woman who almost never let herself get angry first had to learn that anger was okay. Now she is learning something even harder: she does not have to understand everybody’s why, convince them of what they should do, or wait for them to change before she can let the anger go.
Some things belong to God. Some things belong to other people. Our job is to learn what belongs to us and take care of that.