I was angry at God for 36 years and I didn't know it for 27 of those years.  It started in 1971.  One day when I was at work I suddenly started having angry thoughts directed at God.  It really scared me.  I thought I might be demon oppressed.  I knew I couldn't be demon possessed because I was a Christian.  During the next 37 years I had three bouts with severe depression.  During the third bout in 1998 I began to realize I was angry.  It was not the first time anger was mentioned, but until then I didn’t relate it to me.  I started to do some work in anger management, but this didn’t help me with suppressed anger.

Since that time I have gone through nine years of cycles of anxiety and anger.  I shared what I was going through with my wife and the thoughts would subside for a while and resurface again when something triggered them.  I worked through a couple of books by Dr. Robert McGee – The Search for Significance and The Search for Peace.  These are excellent books and helped me, but the unpleasant thoughts continued.  Guilt was a major issue along with fear.  I had no idea how to stop these thoughts.   

A few weeks ago I was prompted to study the grieving process.  A part of this process is anger.  I became interested in exploring this and came to the conclusion that death is not the only loss one grieves over.  I began to realize I had several losses in my life.  I had lost my innocence at age 12, 1954,  when a pedophile priest sexually molested me;   I lost my dad to a heart attack in 1970;  I went through divorces in 1970, 1984, 1987, and 1998;  I became homeless and took bankruptcy in 1998.  These were losses that produced anger, which I suppressed.  There were other things that happened that were painful mixed in with the events I have mentioned.  Some of the anger I was aware of, some I wasn’t.   Regardless, I hadn’t handled it properly.  I was never taught how.

By the time I was 15 I was out of control.