Easily Irritated

In A Cry for Mercy: Prayers from the Genesee (Maryknoll: Orbis, 1994), Henri Nouwen prayed this prayer:

Dear Lord, show me your kindness and your gentleness, you who are meek and humble of heart. So often I say to myself, “The Lord loves me,” but very often this truth does not enter into the center of my heart. The fact that I get so easily upset because of a disappointment, so easily angered because of a slight criticism, and so easily depressed because of a slight rejection, shows that your love does not yet fill me. Why, otherwise, would I be so easily thrown off balance? What can people do to me, when I really know that you love me, care for me, protect me, defend me, guide me and support me? What does a small—or even a great—failure mean, when I know that you are with me in all my sorrows and turmoil? Yet time and again I have to confess that I have not let your love descend fully from my mind into my heart, and that I have not let my knowing grow into a real, full knowledge that pervades all of my being. (p. 30)

Nouwen chose words carefully in his prayer. He used the adverb easily and adjective slight to describe his condition that he was easily irritated or discouraged by slightness. It’s understandable that our moods swing like a pendulum when we are facing life issues, such as health, relationship, education, etc… In Nouwen’s prayer, we see that he was often bothered, even disabled, by minor things in life. The fact that he became restless easily indicates that, according to his prayer, his knowledge of God did not penetrate his heart. He failed to allow whatever he knew about God to be the center of his being. The knowledge of God is in circumference; the knowledge of the self, the center. Even a slight rejection or a small failure penetrates into this center, we are thrown off balance.

The fact that we are easily thrown off balance sends us a message about our spiritual life: what we say and know about our faith and God don’t penetrate into our hearts from our minds. I appreciate Nouwen’s self-awareness, others-sensitivity, and sense of God’s absence in his spiritual life. We can only move on by knowing where we are really at. We can only meet God in reality.

Dear Lord, “I have not let your love descend fully from my mind into my heart, and that I have not let my knowing grow into a real, full knowledge that pervades all of my being.”