THE DANCE OF DISAPPOINTMENT

Life is sometimes hard.  Sometimes fast.  And other times slow.  And mostly, we don't always know the whys of things.  Time is a hard thing to figure since we can only gauge it through our humanness.  One of my favorite quotes comes from the movie "Simon Birch" loosely based on the book entitled, A Prayer For Owen Meany.

Time is a monster.  It cannot be reasoned with.  It responds like a snail to our impatience, then it races like a gazelle when you can't catch your breath.  We were in such a hurry to get to the answers at the end of the road that we never took time to read the signs along the way.  How could we know that everything was working together for a reason.

I've had some huge disappointments in my life.  Some of my disappointments have been situational circumstantial things, others trivial, some relational or of my spirit.  A few years back I was being considered for what would have been a dream job for me; to speak, fund raise and travel for a 5-man privately owned drug research company.  They went with the other candidate.  I thought about that today in light of my middle sister calling me with the news that the job she had interviewed for was given to another.  I listened to her, could hear the disappointment, even questioning in her voice.  After she spoke it all out she said, "Well, I just need to quit feeling sorry for myself and get on with it."  I told her I disagreed with her - that disappointment is a sort of dance.  You have to move through it.  We can fully know that God is working out things for our good, orchestrating the flow of our lives, and still have our hearts be disappointed.  That's because we can't see all that God can.  So, based on our line of vision we have lost something we wanted and we experience disappointment.  I gave her permission to dance with her disappointment for a bit while knowing God's vision is just larger than ours.  She then gave me permission to not mow my lawn tonight:)  After hanging up the phone I thought about other disappointments in my life.  One of them being my marriage.  I was disappointed in the outcome and, that my mate couldn't bring to the table the good stuff to make it flourish, let alone survive.  I too was disappointed in myself that I couldn't find the courage to end something that was destructive to me years ago because of my upbringing, background and family.  How to trust God that even though sometimes 25 years seems a bit wasted, He has a reason. I felt some disappointment when my college aged daughter disregarded my words of "no more piercings till you graduate" and showed up with a large hoop in her nose.  That disappointment soon faded to laughter.   In 7th grade I broke my wrist falling off the top of a human cheerleading pyramid practicing for try-outs.  My 7th grade disappointment was huge.  My cheerleading days were over.  That event though, caused me to realize cheerleading really wasn't who I was - the priceless nugget found in disappointment.  I have been disappointed in people's harsh spirits when it comes to race, or physical appearance or their inability to give grace.  Sometimes those people were even my family.  How to not become like them in my response to their lack was where I needed God's grace too.  Not finishing college has been a source of disappointment in myself over the years.  When the person I loved in my young years chose another path, I danced with disappointment for many, many years.  I was so disappointed at times in the church with "Christians" acting heartless and forgetting that church isn't about them, but rather just simply God - all things God.  What was it about disappointment that is hard?... not getting what my heart wanted or what I thought would be best for me or others.  God seems to weave this strange thread of trust through my disappointments - always asking me "Will you trust me even if it doesn't make sense and it hurts?"  Like the quote says, "How could we know that everything was working together for a reason?"  Which leads me back to disappointment and the dance I do with it.  I'm not alone in it - God is my dance partner.