Can I be honest with you for a second?

I have been angry. Like, genuinely, deeply angry. Not the kind that passes after a few deep breaths. The kind that sits with you over breakfast, follows you into your quiet time, and shows up again when you open the news before bed.

And for a long time, I felt guilty about it. Like I should be more peaceful. More composed. More… Christian about it.

But this month, I am done apologizing for feeling this way. Because honestly? The anger makes complete sense.

Because the situation is real.

Let us just say it out loud.

The price of rice is not going down. The electricity bill arrives every month like a bad joke; how is it possible that we are paying some of the highest power rates in all of Southeast Asia while millions of Filipinos can barely afford to keep the lights on? Wages have not kept up with the cost of just living. And meanwhile, billions; billions; disappear. People in positions of power live lavishly while the tricycle driver, the teacher, the market vendor, the nurse on her third shift this week, are all just trying to survive.

It is not because Filipinos are not working hard enough. Please. We work so hard it breaks my heart sometimes.

It is the system. It is corruption. It is the abuse of power dressed up as public service. And if that makes you angry too; good. It should.

But here is where it got complicated for me.

I did not know what to do with the anger. Do I just stay mad? Post about it? Complain to Allen over dinner for the hundredth time?

Because here is the thing about anger left on its own; it starts to feel like a dead end. You burn, you vent, and then you wake up the next morning and everything is exactly the same. And slowly, without realizing it, you start sliding toward something worse than anger. You start sliding toward hopelessness. Toward this is just how it is. Toward staying stuck.

And that is exactly where Ps. Ets‘ (Lead Pastor of New Life North Metro) message on Romans 8 found me this past Sunday.

No condemnation. Not even for the storm inside you.

“Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus, who live and walk not after the dictates of the flesh, but after the dictates of the Spirit.” (Romans 8:1, AMPC)

Ps. Ets made a distinction that I keep coming back to: the Holy Spirit convicts. The devil condemns. They can feel similar from the inside, but they lead to completely different places.

Conviction says: something is wrong here. Rise up. There is a way forward.

Condemnation says: something is wrong here. Stay down. You deserve this.

He said condemnation keeps you stuck because eventually you start to believe the hard situation is just your fate. And I thought about how that works not just in our personal lives but collectively; how so many of us have quietly absorbed the idea that corruption is inevitable. That poverty is just the natural order of things. That the suffering of the many is simply the price of the comfort of the few.

That is a lie. And it is not from God.

God’s plan, Ps. Ets reminded us, is never to keep you stuck. He does not want you to build a life inside a crisis and just call it home.

Living in the Spirit does not mean looking away.

This is the part I want to push back on a little; the idea that being a woman of faith means being calm and unbothered all the time. That the spiritual thing to do is to just pray about it and not make noise.

I do not think that is what Romans 8 is saying at all.

Ps. Ets described living according to the Spirit as being actively led; not passive, not checked out, but genuinely responsive to what God is actually asking, not just what we wish He would say. And sometimes what He asks is not be still. Sometimes it is speak up. Show up. Do not look away.

The flesh is what makes us scroll past injustice because engaging with it feels like too much. The flesh is what keeps us quiet in rooms where our voice might cost us something. The flesh reaches for comfort over conscience every single time.

Living in the Spirit asks a harder question: what is God actually calling me to do with what I feel?

Letting Jesus take the wheel; and actually meaning it.

Okay, so this analogy from Ps. Ets is so good I need to share it.

He said: Jesus takes the wheel. The Holy Spirit is in the passenger seat, navigating. And you? You are in the back seat. Resting. Not asleep; not checked out; but finally, finally not gripping the wheel of something you were never designed to drive alone.

I laughed a little when he said it because I am absolutely the person who climbs into the back seat and then leans forward the entire ride going are you sure about this route? I think you should turn left here.

I have done that with this country. With systems too big for me to fix alone. With injustices that outlast every election cycle. I have gripped the wheel so hard and all it has done is exhaust me.

Moving to the back seat does not mean I stop caring. It means I stop carrying what was never mine to carry alone. I still do my part; I speak, I show up, I mentor, I refuse to stay silent; and then I trust that God sees the whole road even when I cannot.

“The mind of the flesh is death, but the mind controlled by the Spirit is life and soul-peace.” (Romans 8:6, AMPC)

Soul-peace is not the peace of someone who has stopped feeling. It is the peace of someone who has finally handed the wheel over and chosen to trust the journey.

The small things that kept me grounded.

In the middle of all of this; the anger, the processing, the trying to figure out what to do with all of it; life kept handing me small, quiet moments I almost missed.

Allen and I took a walk through the village one afternoon. No agenda. Just food vendors and easy conversation and the kind of slow, unhurried time together that heavy seasons tend to steal. We talked and laughed and chose each other in the middle of a hard month. And it reminded me that the life I am building is not just found in the big battles. It lives in these ordinary moments too.

These small things; a walk, a shared meal, a husband who keeps showing up; are not distractions from the harder things. They are the reason the harder things are worth fighting through.

What I am taking into next month.

My anger is not going away. I am not asking it to.

But I want it to be useful. I want it to build instead of just burn; to fuel honest conversations, to show up in mentoring, to refuse to normalize things that should never be normal, to be the kind of person who names what is wrong and then points toward something better.

Ps. Ets said repentance is not about punishment. It is about turning around. And I think there is a turning around this country needs; away from cynicism and toward accountability, away from helplessness and toward action, away from the quiet resignation that says this is just how it is.

Because it does not have to be.

God’s plans for us; individually and as a people; are not to keep us stuck. I am choosing to believe that. Even on the mornings when the news makes it really, really hard.

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If you are carrying this same kind of anger right now; the frustrated, exhausted, I-love-this-country-so-much-it-hurts kind; I would love to hear how you are holding it. You are not alone in this. And that righteous anger of yours? God might just want to use it. 🤍