They will try to tell you what to do with your anger. But you should know that they are only protecting themselves. What they mean is it's hot. And they are sweating, uncomfortable next to your blaze.

Don't let them touch your flames. If they come with water, burn white hot so they cannot come close enough. If they come with dirt or blankets. let your flames dance higher than they can hope to reach. You don't hate them, but you know somewhere deep inside that they will starve or smother anything they do not understand.

After they leave, you can relax and let your rage dampen to a dull roar. Find the space in side of yourself to sit beside the fire of your anger. Ask it gently what do you have to teach me?

As often as not, I have heard the strangest truths come from the mouth of anger. Sometimes it is trying to tell me that I am more valuable than I have been lead to believe.  Sometimes it is the war cry that says the world was never meant to be this way. It is worth fighting for them to be better. Anger has led me to fight impossible battles just because they were right, just, and worthwhile.

It can do the same for you; but you have to listen, you have to burn.

Five letters.
That's how many it's taken for me to finally write with clarity and honesty. It usually takes me two though sometimes I can do it in one.

This is a practice that I started in middle school. It gives my anger something to chew on. When it's done digesting, I can usually tell the difference between want and need, hurt and damage, idealistic hope and a possible future. When my anger is done eating, I am left with only bones.

I wrote every time our stepdad moved out, every time dad chose his girlfriend or his selfishness over us, and every time someone judged our family without seeing what binds us together. We were a family always splintering apart, but we held together on the strength of our will and our love.

We are still a family and we are still splintering. The pressure and the blows come from different sources now, but the threat is always the same. Oblivion. And I've written about it all, knowing that my anger could either destroy us all or else help me find the materials with which to build.

I've written and written. I've burned and burned. Writing meant that I had to remember. Writing also meant that I could disappear enough to see the other perspective. I was angry. For the way things could have been or should have been. For the hurt that I wasn't sure would ever heal. For the adult sized problems we faced as children. Writing connected my anger to so much fuel, I'm surprised my skin didn't glow with it's fire. But that anger also kept hope alive and in a way kept me sane which is to say, safe.

I've gotten good at it. Writing, burning, refining. The goal is always "if I can help this person understand only one thing, what will the one thing be?" Writing, burning, refining. Remembering and reliving until what is left is trustworthy enough to build with. I didn't want to be a fire, the blaze that people shrink back from. I wanted to be a bridge. I wanted to make the adults in our lives understand each other. I wanted us all to meet in the middle even if the middle had to be carried on my shoulders, even if the whole family had to be carried on my back. That was when I thought people needed saving and I could save them.

I still want to be a bridge. But I am still, and perhaps only, a fire. Try as I might, I still burn. I've burned through 5 letters trying to see through my selfishness into what is true, trying to see through my hopeful gluttony into what is necessary and useful. And I think it's ironic that the fire you're afraid of is the only tool I have to build a road home.

When I write to you next and the page smells like smoke and the embers singe your finger tips, remember that it consumed me no less than 5 times. Five times, I went up in flames trying to find what was worth saving from the blaze. Five times, I sat raw, uncomfortable, vulnerable. Again and again, I was forced to admit that I was not done yet. I was still angry which meant that I hadn't let all of the hurt in yet, hadn't greeted it by its proper name. The bones were still obscured. If I tried to build a bridge with what I had then, we would drown in the river after the bridge broke.

It's tempting to make the mighty, tragic phoenix my metaphor. That's glamorous but that isn't honest. Instead of the triumphant phoenix, my heart is a beloved house that I burn to find the hidden treasure. Five times, I've burned my own house down. It doesn't get any easier with practice. What I'm trying to say is that our family has always meant more to me than the heart I lose and the blisters I gain when I ask my anger to teach me what is important. So I burn and burn through five letters, hopefully through your silence and into a future that we can build together.

This is the sixth letter and the epilogue. I know this because the fire has finally left and only my bones are left.

This summer has felt like a lifetime. I have grown old, turned a corner, and grown young again--only to repeat the process. It feels like being sifted. Shaken and shaken until things sit in their best places. It's been uncomfortable but full of purpose. I have felt so many things. Too often there were too many things to feel and I couldn't choose or focus so I just had to let the anger, sadness, happiness, relief, and whatever else rock my insides until wariness saved me from continuing on like that. It was a season with many seasons packed in, leaking from the corners, and yet giving meaning to and resolution to so much from the past.

I am trying to find my path.

I walk trying my best to place one foot down in a safe and solid place and then another. There is no path yet. But I walk because the future is out there somewhere, forward. My family comes into view, tells me who they thought I was and what they expect from me; but they don't agree with each other and I know that I can't please them all. Moreover, I sacrificed my whole childhood trying to keep what little happiness we all had safe. But it didn't matter because they all in their own way chose to forget and alter the memories of the past. The conflicts that could have made us stronger now keep us apart. We've joked that I am the memory keeper, but never before has that made me feel so alone and left me with such a sense of despair. The path is forward though and I am trying to remember that the past is over. Whatever tools or memories we have left behind, we can only carry the strength that surviving the past gives us forward.

My coworkers come into view next. This is the longest I have worked anywhere and these are the people who see my exhaustion, impatience, and my struggle with the daily routine. I give them more than I realize and am surprised when they respond by giving also of themselves. This is the greatest diversity of people I interact with. So many of them are "not like me". I am not like most of them. We are not like each other. And yet we argue and resolve and do the work it takes to keep moving forward even though this job has always been nothing more than an emergency raft which I would abandon the second I saw the shore. I am only here because the vessel I was sailing shipwrecked and the storm hasn't abated in years. Some days I am so angry I could cry. Today, I am grateful I didn't drown in the sea and so confusedly thankful for the opportunity to struggle to build a community among a group of people with tremendously little in common besides our time.

And then my faith group. It's become more and more difficult to find the vocabulary to describe my spiritual and religious views. I feel like the words I used to rely on have changed meaning in this political climate in at least the same severity as I've changed. I still believe in Jesus, in his sacrifice, love and justice, but I don't meet very many people asking the kinds of questions that keep me up at night. My living situation last year really damaged my faith in the community of believers at a time when I was already wrestling with so much. I've never felt so judged or unworthy in my life except perhaps in dealing with my family on issues of forgiveness, mental health, and gender roles. The only reason I am still a person of faith is a promise not to let go until I have been made certain that God himself has let go of me--regardless of what the body of believers does, how it succeeds or fails.

It's been a season of emotions. Of letting go of people you love and respect so that they can do whatever it is that they need to. Of being loosely anchored by tremendous friends who happen to live too far away, but who resonate with the part of me that I am desperately trying to encourage to hold on and grow, the part of me that believes in... anything. Because hope and faith and love are hard to find but so necessary if you are ever to learn who you are and what you can contribute to this world. I am so grateful for my "loose anchors", M & T; so thankful that they can handle my rage and hurt with equal grace and help me find my way home. I think I'm getting close.

I've stopped to catch my breath and appreciate that suddenly the storm of emotions is providing clarity and highlighting what's important to me and in me. Something like a path is beginning to form which has been my prayer for a long, long time. I have tried to be patient but still busy. I don't know if I am ready, but if the last 5 years are not enough then I am lost and probably won't be found. I grieve what this process has cost me, but I also accept it now. And now, my toes tingle as I sense the path I have been asking for.