Dealing With Disappointment

Sometimes life throws you a curveball and by sometimes I mean all the time. It’s hard when things don’t go our way especially if it seems unfair, and currently I am battling to give into my feelings or stick with the facts which isn’t easy if it really hurts. The amount of tears, I’ve cried is uncountable and the pain is still there, but the bitterness isn’t. There is a choice we have to make to either side our flesh or our faith, and both choices have consequences whether good or bad. The truth is no matter what happens we need to believe that God is good, trustworthy, and faithful, and what shocks us doesn’t surprise him at all. 

What are some ways we battle disappointments?

1. Get Better Not Bitter

'We can rejoice, too, when we run into problems and trials, for we know that they help us develop endurance. And endurance develops strength of character, and character strengthens our confident hope of salvation. And this hope will not lead to disappointment. For we know how dearly God loves us, because he has given us the Holy Spirit to fill our hearts with his love.' Romans 5:3-5

It's easy to live at a pity party, but you can’t grow there. We can let what happened to us develop or derail us. We have that choice do I want to let this make me better… will I allow God to use this to grow my character or faith. Maybe this disappointment happened just to develop something in us and cause us to grow closer and more like Christ. Its not the most comforting thought, but it does give us hope for a purpose to our pain.

2. Intimacy In Brokenness

Our brokenness and hurt gives us an opportunity to for intimacy, we can either bring our best to God or bring our brokenness. It is substaintionally easier to bring only the good to him, only the pretty, only the wins… but true intimacy is when we bring the heartbreak, the ugly cry, the true raw pain. Countless people in the Bible brought their true raw hurt self to God, and he doesn’t condemn them or belittle them for feeling pain. Instead he draws near and it says he becomes friends to them for example look BK (before king) David. The bible calls him a man after God’s own heart, but if you read the psalms its mostly David shouting in a caves asking God to kill his enemies.

'After removing Saul, he made David their king. God testified concerning him: ‘I have found David son of Jesse, a man after my own heart; he will do everything I want him to do.’ ' Acts 13:22

3. Faith Over Feelings

“for whenever our heart condemns us, God is greater than our heart, and he knows everything.”

1 John 3:20

We can easily side with our feelings, our hurts, our rejection, and our disappointments especially when it is so in our face, but we need to chose our faith over our natural instincts. Faithfulness isn’t just committing to something its saying I will do everything with excellence even if its honoring those who have wronged us. As the verse above says our God is greater than our feelings and he knows all; we have this assurance that even our disappointments are known to our God. Although we can trust God that he knew what would happen, but it isn’t easy to overrule our feelings. How do we do that… maybe its blessing the person that God the job we wanted. God could be calling us to honor them in our words even if your hurt is justified and people may even want you to verbalize your feelings, and who you process the disappointment is beyond important.  

4. Grab The Root

“Watch out that no poisonous root of bitterness grows up to trouble you, corrupting many. “

Hebrews 12:15

Process Up. If we don’t process our pain we can let it take a root of bitterness in our hearts. Devil wants nothing more than to let offense rule us which is why if we allow it to sit it will start to grow. I’ve spent hours on the phone or in the arms of my mentors sobbing, dealing with this raw pain, wondering why, and processing through the regret. Instead of running my mouth to others, I ran to them to the people that knew me and could check my heart. Sometimes it's not the easiest to process to godly counsel because they rarely tell you what you want to hear, but they tell you what you need. We need people who aren't impressed by us at all and aren't afraid of saying the things that sting. I remember trying to throw myself a pity party and they laid them out and told me I might be making a bigger deal out of this pain that it was. They asked me why does this hurt so much… and I had to think about it and when I figured it out we worked through that pain. Sometimes the pain is a mistrust of our God; we grasp on to something and don’t want to let go because we are afraid that it's the best thing for us. 

5. It Is In The Plan

“Trust in the LORD with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding; in all your ways submit to him, and he will make your paths straight.”

Proverbs 3:5-6

The biggest breakthrough I've had through my disappointment is God has the game plan and is the best coach. Here the thing about coaches… SOMETIMES THEY DON’T MAKE SENSE. I remember playing soccer and having a coach make us do the same passing drill for forty minutes straight and it was a super simple drill. We didn’t understand what the point was and we definitely thought my coach was crazy, but one day in a game we did that passing combinations and got pass the defense and scored. It was crazy that something we didn’t understand the purpose of could actually be beneficial and powerful. God likes to do things that way too… maybe we won’t understand till the other side of heaven, but maybe we will. Maybe this "No" is to produce resilience in our lives or maybe that job that you didn’t get is actually positioning you for your true dream job or maybe that boy/girl that broke up with you is actually freeing you to find the one. When we face disappointment, we get the amazing opportunity to develop our character and faith in God.

Therefore if you are reading this and you still feel some pain or anger over the disappointment, I encourage you go to God and his word. Find someone you can ugly cry with then have them tell you it's going to be okay, but they will also TELL you the hard, ugly truth. Finally trust the plan and the God who made it.  

#disappointment #jesus #life