Disappointments

Life is filled with disappointments. We feel the disappointment when we don’t get what we wanted on our pizza, but we also feel the disappointment when we don’t get what we wanted in a marriage. The word “disappointment” is used to fill the gamut of life’s sad moments.

Just the other week, my husband and I had to vet through one of life’s disappointments.  This disappointment didn’t shatter our world, but it did put a strain on our relationship as we processed through it differently than one another. We had a contract on our house hoping to move into a smaller house.  This is a dual purposed endeavor. One, to clean out our finances a bit to give us an opportunity to give more to our community in a financial way. Second, simply because we don’t need this big house. The journey in this has been a spiritual one for me walking side by side with God to the point of surrender. When the contract fell through, I felt as though the rug had been wiped out from under me, but truthfully, this was just one of life’s disappointments.  Not life shattering, just disappointing. The continuing of the story is pretty cool in that we now have a new contract on our house offering more money for our home.  Cool story and as we often say, “A God story!”

But sometimes life doesn’t have this beautiful bow wrapped around it.  Often, we are not able to see the silver lining, or the silver lining doesn’t exist.  Several years ago, in the process of building our current home, we got “stuck” with an extra piece of property.  Now this is a long story as to how this happened, but it had to do with our integrity and keeping our word.  Very noble therefore we believed that our nobleness would be rewarded. As we put this piece of property on the market, we knew that God would reward our integrity and we would make a profit. Not true! Ultimately, we lost $40,000 and the person whom which our integrity was directed towards walked away and we have not seen them since. This was $40,000 of disappointment that was never reconciled with God swooping in and saving the day.  This is $40,000 that will never be accounted for or redeemed. This was $40,000 we could have used to pay for our sons’ tuition or given away to someone in need. But years later, it is gone never to be seen again.

Why? Why God? I have poured out my heart to you in faith. I believed so strongly that this was of You. I followed You. I obeyed You. I believed in You. What happened to the verse “Ask and it will be given…knock and the door will open?” I asked and I knocked only to receive a “no”.  We are not only disappointed by life, but we are also disappointed by God.

Disappointments in life are God’s moment to shine. But is this putting God into a box or treating Him like the genie in bottle? Kind of like a “poof…life disappointment turned into life triumph.” Often within these disappointments, well-meaning friends of faith will comfort us with phrases such as “God is just waiting to do something even bigger.” I have made that comment myself. I used to find comfort in this until I realized it isn’t necessarily true. There is no promise in His word telling me that because He said no to something that He is just waiting to say yes to something bigger. This is just how we choose to patronize ourselves in our disappointments.

Sometimes a “no” is simply a “no” without us ever seeing it become something different. Sometimes there is no silver lining, no “big God” moment. Sometimes it’s just a disappointing story.

So, what do we do with our disappointing story with no silver lining? I wish I could reach out to each of you readers to catch some of your wisdom of how you handle disappointments. Then maybe we could fold each of them up and put them in a jar labeled “Disappointment Jar”. Then at the next life disappointment, I would reach in and pull one out.

Bottom line is that there is no three-step process. There is only faith and hope and belief that God is in control always and forever. End of sentence. Put a period on it!

While I do believe that we need to feel every emotion in our disappointments in life, there comes a point along our journey where we simply must let go and label it as one of our perplexities in life. If not, we will spend all our energy on this one disappointment leaving no energy for the next.

Our goal in life needs to be to seek Jesus, not seek the Jesus who takes away our disappointments! Simply Jesus!