The pull up workouts I’m doing are diverse and new. Some things I’ve done before and now how to do, like squats and…well maybe just the squats. One of the exercises I had to do today were inverted rows.

Pull up Dictionary
Inverted row	Also known as a supine row. This is a back exercise that requires you to pull yourself up towards a secure barbell.

The more horizontal you lay, the harder the exercise gets. As you can imagine, I was more diagonal than horizontal. And as I was doing them, I kept getting confused – what am I supposed to be exercising? Where am I supposed to feel this? Am I doing this right? What Is this for? I must look so ridiculous. I hate this. Forget this. I don’t want to work so hard if I’m doing it wrong.

I hate this feeling.

This feeling of “what am I doing?” And more honestly, “what the h*ll am I doing?” This feeling of not knowing if what I’m doing is right. Not being sure if all the energy I’m exerting is going anywhere productive. Fearing that I’m a fool if I am doing things wrong.

And my gym frustrations are even more compounded with my life frustrations. Just as I’m learning these new exercises to develop weak muscles, I’m trying to implement new boundaries, express new emotions and develop greater strength. I’m always telling my clients that there is health and hope behind anger. And I wholeheartedly believe this. But in my personal life, anger has been something that I’ve often evaded through rationalizing and over-spiritualizing. It always seemed holier for me to swallow the anger, “deny myself”, and forgive the person who hurt me (in the case of my marriage, my husband). And while that’s good in part, it’s not healthy in whole. Because in all of that, I never gave myself time to feel my anger, process what I was angry about, and communicate the weight of my hurt/pain/anger to someone else. If I don’t fully acknowledge my hurt and pain, then is my forgiveness all that sincere and legitimate? What does it mean to forgive someone for just the surface of how they impacted me, and not the full weight of it?

My hallmark move was to ask the “offender” their intentions behind something they did that hurt me. If they had good intentions and it was a misunderstanding, I totally dropped it. I wouldn’t even mention that I was hurt. And for a while, I was so lauded in my Christian community for that. But the problem with that, was that I never got to share my vulnerability with my friends. I held the weight of my pain by myself instead of taking the opportunity to share that pain together. It gave off this air that I was confident, secure, forgiving, and easygoing.

Fast forward to today, where I’m seeing how unhealthy and unhelpful those moves were to my marriage and me. And as I’m trying to give myself permission to feel anger…I AM SO BAD AT IT. I am so clumsy and confused with my anger. I was recently with my husband for family time with the kids. He was falling into his unhealthy habits of talking down to me and I was furious. Furious for so many reasons and at so many different people:

Furious at him for treating me that way

Furious at myself for bearing through that behavior for so long and trying to convince myself that it’s ok

Furious at the people in my husband’s life who treated him like that so often, that he learned to treat me like that

Furious at him for being this way

Furious at myself for being disappointed that he hasn’t changed, because there’s a part of me that really hopes he will

Furious at myself for hoping that he’ll change

Furious at him for putting us in this situation

Furious at the influential people in his life who groomed him to be this way

And it goes on.

And it’s like I’ve poked the bear that has been sleeping for 30 years of my life. And with all that anger, comes the guilt and shame.

Guilt that I shouldn’t be this angry as a Christian

Shame that I haven’t developed this muscle of navigating and voicing my anger

Shame that I’m 39 and SO inarticulate about my anger and weaknesses

Guilt that my kids have to go through all of this

Shame that I’m so far from the ideal of a healthy Christian marriage.

…what the hell am I doing

I’m trying. I’m showing up for the workouts. I’m sitting in the car, outside of the gym, wondering if I should just drive home and lay in bed. I’m then sitting on a bench in the gym, wondering if I should just drive home and lay in bed. I’m at the bar, clumsily trying to do an inverted row…whatever the heck that is.

I’m trying. I’m pulling up my friend’s name on my phone, contemplating if I should message her to get together. I’m drafting a message, then deleting it, then writing it again, asking if we can talk because I feel so angry at my husband and I don’t know what to do. I’m at her place, crying, clumsily trying to express my anger and confusion.

And tomorrow, I hope I can do it again.