Episode Summary:

Our guest on this episode, Kathy Collard Miller, was raised by a very angry mother. The more Kathy tried to suppress her anger, the more it surfaced. Over time, Kathy found herself expressing her anger toward her husband and her daughter, and in her own words, abusing her daughter. Kathy shares her painful wounds in this episode, as well as the story of redemption and the beautiful sacred scars God has given her.

Quotables from the episode:

• Sometimes when we talk about pain or wounds, that pain comes at the hand of another. Sometimes we have no explanation for why it happens (like a medical diagnosis), and sometimes we participate in choices that end up hurting us in the long run.
• Frequently our greatest areas of ministry come out of our greatest areas of pain.
• I have a unique story because not only was I wounded, but I wounded others in turn.
• As a child, I didn’t know I had anger building up inside of me until in third grade I hit my best friend in the nose. To this day, I have no recollection what I was so angry about that would prompt me to be aggressive. As my friend ran away sobbing, I thought to myself, “See what happens when you get angry, Kathy? You’d better never get angry again!”
• Buried anger doesn’t go anywhere except making a volcano.
• Also in the third grade, I was sexually harmed, although I didn’t know that that was what it was called, but I thought it was my fault and that I should have prevented it. So the anger toward myself began to build.
• My mother was orphaned at the age of ten, resulting in her own anger issues toward me that built up inside of me. I didn’t know it would be detrimental toward others later, but I’ve also found it to be something that God has used in amazing ways.
• I was never taught how to appropriately deal with my anger. As a little girl who tried to be perfect to prevent me from overreacting in anger, I then thought that God must be disappointed in me and that he was expecting me to be angry.
• Because of the messages I was taught when I was growing up, I pictured God in heaven with his arms crossed saying, “Kathy, when are you going to be perfect so I can love you?”
• After I became a Christian at 17, I married my husband, Larry. But all the anger that had built up in me started coming out toward him because his promise of being my perfect, Godly, prince charming didn’t come true and left me totally disappointed. I interpreted that as there was something wrong with me.
• I began to believe I wasn’t loved or cared for and that came out in bitterness, anger, criticism, never being happy, or never being thankful for what my husband did do.
• I began to displace my anger toward my husband on to my two-year-old daughter because when she misbehaved, I interpreted that as “I am a horrible mother.” In the end, I began to physically abuse her.
• I kept praying for an instantaneous deliverance of my anger and when God didn’t do that, I believed God had given up on me, and I almost took my life. But God intervened.
• We have to feel it to heal it, meaning we have to acknowledge the pain. Then we have to choose to engage in the healing process. When we don’t choose the path of healing, other things will happen and there will be consequences of that, until one day it comes out at a less opportune time and a less opportune way.
• Scripture talks about the importance of getting wise counsel. There is no shame in needing help. Seek out a trusted friend, a mentor, a counselor, a coach, or a pastor and get help.  Do not try to handle your pain alone.
• When people didn’t follow through with what they said they were going to do, I concluded that I was worthless.
• My healing began when I got the courage to share my sin with the women in my Bible study that I led in my neighborhood. They began to hold me accountable, and they prayed for me. I started taking parenting classes and reading books and I read in the Bible Ephesians 4:26, “In your anger do not sin: Do not let the sun go down while you are still angry.”
• I can be angry, but surrender whatever it is that I think I deserve that’s causing my anger.
• God showed me that I was making my husband an idol because I was expecting him to be responsible for my happiness and contentment. That brought me to the place where I could acknowledge God was the only one who could fully meet my needs. And whether or not my husband ever changed, that was up to God.
• As God began to have me share my story, other women would come up to tell me that they struggled with the same thing but had never told anyone else.
• My relationship with my daughter and our family is healed. She has always supported my ministry sharing with others how I treated her. She loves God. I thought I had destroyed her, but God has redeemed us and brought about a sacred scar. Th