Overcoming Hatred

I don’t often find myself hating people.

That’s not a flex or a humblebrag.  It’s how my temperament seems to work: I don’t often seem able to frequently access emotions like genuine anger or loathing so much as I can sadness or hurt.  I tend to blame myself more than others for problems, as it is—whether or not they’re actually my fault.

So if you had asked me if wrath and malice were particular habits of mine, I’d tell you no.

Until six weeks ago.

I won’t get into the details of what happened.  Simply put, someone to whom I had given a good deal of the benefit of the doubt and a great deal of generosity and grace absolutely wounded and attacked me in a very public and painful way.  I did not see it coming.

When it happened, I ugly cried.

And then I became furious.

I don’t know why, particularly.  I’ve been hurt before, betrayed before by people I trusted, and I’ve never once been this upset about it.  And it’s not like the incident itself caused me any lasting harm: in fact, when the whole matter occurred, I was the recipient of a great deal of public sympathy and understanding, as the individual in question has done herself no favors with others, either.  Everyone was very aware that this was not a me problem.

And yet.

Maybe it was that I genuinely had an affection for this person, as complicated as they could sometimes be.  Maybe because while I thought they were capable of unkindness and unfairness, I never expected them to go for the jugular with me.  Maybe because I know this person knows the year I’ve had, and how wounded I’ve been, and chose to hurt me anyway.

I’m not sure.  But I came absolutely unhinged.   I wanted them to suffer in equal measure; I wanted them to be punished; I wanted them to be hurt.  I absolutely hated them in a way that even in the moment I found astonishing, as I banged my clenched fist into a pillow and wished the absolute worst on them.

The first time I was set to encounter this person after the incident, I looked at my husband with tears in my eyes.  “What am I supposed to do?  What am I supposed to say?”  I couldn’t fathom being in the same room without my absolute contempt showing all over my face, so I avoided an encounter and slipped away after the event was over. 

Of course, this isn’t how God wants us to live.  And I know that.

I also know that it’s not always easy to master emotions once they’ve gone out of control.  Some people will tell you it’s a simple act of will.  It’s not.

Sure, we can fake it.  We can feel loathing brewing in our heart and we can fake a smile and show mincing politeness (that sometimes emerges as passive aggression) and commit “acts of love.”  But that doesn’t always remove the feeling or lessen it.  Sometimes, none of our efforts do.

I think back sometimes to my college years, when my grandmother on my father’s side grew bedridden and ill.  Grouchy, cranky, and ungrateful, she refused to enter a nursing home and refused a caregiver, so the burden of nursing her fell to my mother.  Daily, my mother walked down to my grandmother’s stifling 90-degree house to be insulted or ignored all while helping change adult diapers, turn my grandmother over to avoid bedsores, and lift her in and out of bed.

After one such visit, I found her resting her head against the steering wheel of her car.  “I’m not going to get any reward in heaven for any of this.”

I sat, sympathetic, in the passenger seat.  “Sure you are.  It’s like the most unselfish thing you could be doing, to love her like this.”

“I don’t love it.  Or her.  Right now I hate it.  And her.”

I remember, at the time, I tried to list practical ways for my mother to love my grandmother again, and to love the acts of service that would eventually strain a muscle in her shoulder and ruin her back.  Make a gratitude list.  Think of when my grandmother had been more herself.  Try to take little breaks, or—

“I just need to pray to the Holy Spirit,” Mom said, finally.  “Because only God can change a heart.”

And she was right.  We can say all the right things, do all the virtuous things, and wait and hope our feelings catch up.  Sometimes they do.  In the absence of love, that’s probably better than nothing at all.  But only God can fix the origin.  Only God can take a heart that hates and turn it into a heart that loves.  That is the work of the Spirit.  It’s not something humans can do.

Confronted with my own experience of absolute hatred, I took it to God, and found that I had to be completely honest.  “I hate her,” I told God.  “And I know you know.  I really, really hate her.  And I know how to act like I don’t, but in my  heart, I still do.  And I don’t know how to undo that without your help.”

And what can I tell you, about where I am now?

I can tell you that the Spirit is working, because I no longer find myself replaying the incident over and over, obsessing on it, growing furious and wrathful as I relive the details.  I have stopped talking about it, inflaming the injustice and awfulness of it with sympathetic parties.  I’ve stopped expecting an apology, or closure.  I can be in a room with that person, and have conversations with them, and not feel stirrings of head-ache inducing anger.  I have forgiven, to the extent that I think I’m able, though I remain uncomfortably aware I have not forgotten, and the not-forgetting can very easily and quickly turn into a grudge.  I have moved from actively wishing this person ill to cultivating a kind, if effortful, indifference.

And I know that it will take time, and God will work on me, and I will learn to love her.

But I wanted to write from this in-between state to show that it’s not an immediate fix, always.  That the work of the Holy Spirit is incremental, and we are failing flesh caught up in holy affection.  I am writing this because so many accounts I read of Christian forgiveness and kindness and love started with “I hated her” on page one and end with “I love her now” on page two and leave out an entire chapter, an entire book, of growing in-between.

God works, as we allow Him, and sometimes even as we resist.

And His work in us can be sudden and magnificent, and it can be subtle and slow.

I hated her.  Now, I don’t hate her.  I don’t know if I love her yet either.  But the fact that I’m thawing is evidence of the Spirit moving in me, and I’m grateful for it.  It puts me in mind of a line from a Jars of Clay song I still love:

cold is the night

but colder still is the heart made of stone turned from clay

The danger of our sin is that it will harden us—against help, against healing, against allowing God to do His work.  I’m still struggling through and against my sinful nature.  We all are, in our ways.  But if there’s a relief it’s that God loves me enough to be the voice inside that says this is not good enough and that in grace allows me to bend enough to grow through it.  To be softened through it.

God is at work in the in-between.