"NO THANK YOU"

On anger and boundaries

Jonathan always has a lot to say in church, and he doesn’t hold back. By now most people are used to his various vocalizations like “GOOD JOB” after a song or “HAVE A GOOD WEEKEND” or “BLUE BOX” after a prayer, and nobody really seems to mind when he speaks out. A few weeks ago one of the elders, Steve, was leading us in prayer and Jonathan started speaking, so Steve just stopped, waited till Jonathan had gone through his litany of comments, and then continued. It was so nice, how he just made space for who Jonathan was — like he was letting Jonathan’s words be part of the prayer, not just an interruption of it.

Jonathan’s latest phrase is “NO THANK YOU!” If the service leader is making an announcement and says, “So if anyone’s interested—” Jonathan says, “NO THANK YOU!"

Or “Does anyone have anything they’d like to—” “NO THANK YOU!”

He did that several times yesterday, but everyone just took it in stride and laughed. There’s room for him there. And there’s room for “NO THANK YOU” there.

The other day a church small group I’m in was discussing a section from Sarah Bessey’s book Field Notes for the Wilderness: Practices For an Evolving Faith. We were reading a chapter called “Tell the Truth and Learn to Lament,” in which Bessey talks about how we need to face and process the losses in our lives — and she uses the stages of grieving (denial, anger, bargaining, depression, acceptance, finding meaning) as a way to explore how we might do that. This is what she says about anger (p. 81):

Anger is a scary one for a lot of us. We feel anger at our old selves, anger for our mistakes, anger at the people who hurt us or left us or traumatized us, anger at the religion or system, anger at the role we played in the systems themselves, anger at our church or partner or friends or politicians, anger at God, anger at the losses, anger at our own self. The anger can feel endless.

We are often discipled in hiding or suppressing anger, rather than feeling it, so when the full force of our anger manifests, yes, it is scary for us and those around us, but that’s only because we haven’t learned the strength and healing that’s possible on the other side of our anger. As author Glennon Doyle writes, “Anger delivers our boundaries to us.”

There’s a lot in those two short paragraphs, and we had a good discussion of them, but the last part, the Glennon Doyle quote (from Doyle’s book Untamed) about anger delivering our boundaries, was particularly interesting to me. I looked up the context of the quote; Doyle describes anger as coming to our door to deliver something — a recognition that a boundary has been crossed — and she says, “When we answer the door and accept that delivery, we begin to know ourselves better.”

I know Jonathan isn’t actually angry at anything in particular when he says “NO THANK YOU,” and I’m pretty sure he’s not establishing his boundaries, either (“I feel violated by the making of announcements!”) — but I think “No thank you” is a great example of what Bessey and Doyle are talking about with their references to anger signaling a crossing of boundaries.

I remember one September being in a very stressful season with our kids in terms of health issues and school adjustments. A person I’d had some friction with was pressuring me to respond to an email they had sent me. It was important and required attention, but it wasn’t urgent, and I knew I didn’t have the bandwidth to deal with this situation on top of all the home stresses, so I promised them I would reply as soon as I could.

Then a couple of days later the person emailed me again, complaining that my lack of response was upsetting to them. I still recall how angry I was when I read their email, how disrespected and violated I felt. I actually had to get up and walk away from the computer so I didn’t unleash my rage on them right there in the moment. Mind you, when I simmered down and wrote back in a more measured, peaceable tone a few days later, they got really mad and wouldn’t speak to me!

But the point is, my entire self was saying a big “NO THANK YOU” to their pressure and demands. I had set a boundary — “This is what I will do” — and they tried to push past it. The anger I felt was delivering to me some very useful information about the relationship and about myself.

Bessey talks about “the strength and healing … on the other side of our anger,” and I think we all get to that “other side” in different ways and at different speeds. In my case I might actually have gotten there more quickly if I’d expressed my anger directly and immediately, rather than choosing to let it die down before I spoke. But I did what seemed right at the time, so I’m really not sure.

But I am sure that we need to pay attention to our “NO THANK YOU” moments — those times when we recognize a boundary has been violated. At these moments, as Doyle says, we can begin to know ourselves better. We can recognize that we deserve to be treated well. We can remember that we are free — free to say “No thank you” (or “Yes please”) with full confidence in our belovedness and worth.

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