If You’ve Ever Been Disappointed

Here’s one from the archives for you today, my friends, because it’s a message I need to hear fresh and new today.

One morning last week as I did my early reading and light spilled over the dew-soaked earth like a glass of yellowed buttermilk, two yearling does visited the meadow behind our house. The girls were wary, and when I moved to the window to watch them nibble the new grass along the fence line, they lifted their heads in tandem to study me—tails twitching behind. They soon surmised I was no threat and resumed their brunching, content. It was cool outside, fall is beginning to whisper, and I noted the thickness of their fur, wondered how it would feel to the touch.

Since then, I moon expectantly around the window as often as I can, hoping to catch another glimpse the little girls’ doe-eyed beauty.

To listen to this post:

I am a hopeless sentimentalist—a hopeless hoper; always believing the best is yet to come, always holding out for a glimpse of wonder. I study the night sky patiently for shooting stars, search the clover patch diligently for the elusive four-leaf, linger long on the balcony by the ocean for a glimpse of the dolphin’s rounded nose to poke up out of the waves.

I’ve been disappointed too many times to name and yet, my spirit still gets its hopes up when waiting. I never seem to learn my lesson, often diving straight into hope from possibility without a second thought. God has almost cured me of wanting anything at all through the repeated blows of disappointment I have experienced over the years.

But not quite.

Recently, I suffered another disappointment and I’m having a hard time shaking this one. Even though I know it’s irrational, I’ve been asking myself “why?” a lot. I’ve caught myself wishing I wasn’t so full of hope. I’ve been asking God what I’m doing wrong, what I’m supposed to learn from this grief, and why am I always made to take the hard path? I tear up at the strangest times and find myself without words during my prayer time. I’ve been sitting in silence a lot. It’s quiet here, inside the walls of me. I have been touching the moments gently—feeling around inside my heart.

Romans 5:5 tells me, “... hope does not disappoint ...” but I’ve been complaining to God about what I feel is a lack of truth in this statement. I’ve been identifying with God’s name for his people in Zachariah 9:12: “prisoners of hope.”

And still, I hope. I hope this disappointment is for a greater cause. That this thing longed for will be replaced by something of greater joy. That the reason for this “no” would be clear to me and I would feel grateful to be saved from whatever certain perils a “yes” would have brought.

We are more than overcomers, I remind myself. Our hope is in more than earthly desires, I remind myself. Our hope is a person, his name is Jesus, I remind myself. I keep thinking of the victory my faith tells me is already won, but one I still must wait for. I’ve been thinking about these things and sometimes, I just feel tired.

But I still believe.

I can believe this and still grieve a loss that keeps breaking my heart. I can hold these two things simultaneously because I believe Jesus cares about my here and now. He cares about the details of my life in the now.

This is the mystery of being an Advent people, this already-but-not-yet our hearts understand better than our heads. I don’t quite understand it either, my mind almost grasps it but then it slips away as quickly as the night fades from the morning sky.

But the shimmer—this glimmer—of this truth stays inside of me. This morning I touch it gently with my thoughts as I move to the window once more. I watch through the glass, my feet planted in sunlight, as the two yearling sisters emerge from the brush and sniff my perpetually wounded hydrangea bush, destined to never see a bloom for the nibbling.

The house glows soft with morning light and my heart floods with hope once again.