What’s the biggest disappointment of your life?
Maybe it’s a high hope that came smashing down with an injury, a breakup, a loss. Or maybe it was a noble dream- for healing, for children, for peace- that has slowly fizzled out.
I had some disappointment last week when some grand plans I had for myself and my family didn’t pan out. The details don’t matter. What matters infinitely more is that I learn to do disappointment well.
Because how I cope with my disappointment reflects a lot on my God.
For God’s Sake, Do Disappointment Well
My learning to cope has been slow. The devils of Self-pity and I-deserve are right there, crouching at my door, desiring to have me the second my plans fall through.
But I am learning. Here are two things I know about coping with disappointment.
- Joy comes when we choose what we did not choose.
- Grumbling won’t make the bitter taste go away, but gratitude will.
But the third is new- or maybe it’s just a new spin on the first two.
See God’s Hand in the Crooked Path
In my disappointment, Ecclesiastes 7:14 gives me pause: Consider the work of God, for who can make straight what God has made crooked?
Thomas Boston wrote a book on that one verse. It’s called The Crook in the Lot. Crook is short for crooked and lot is as in one’s “lot in life.”
Boston writes,
I am now meeting only what has been determined by his eternal plan. I know not what is the “reason” why it was appointed; but I see that God had resolved to do it, and that it is vain to resist him.”
When we are disappointed, can we say the same thing? That it’s not by chance or accident, but by His appointment?
Boston adds,
It is much, when we are afflicted, to be able to make this reflection. I had rather be afflicted, feeling that it is “the appointment of God,” than feeling that it is “by chance” or “hap-hazard.”
It speaks comfort to the afflicted children of God to consider that whatever the crook in your lot is, it is of God’s making and therefore you may look upon it kindly since it is your Father who made it for you. Question not but that there is a favorable design in it toward you.
And by some miracle of grace, that’s what saints do with their disappointment. They trust that there is a favorable design in their disappointment.
Because God makes no mistakes.
Too Wise and Too Loving to Err
John Paton and his pregnant wife Mary left Scotland to be missionaries to the New Hebrides islands in the South Pacific on April 16, 1858. They arrived on November 5th. In March 1859, his wife and newborn son died.
Talk about a bitter taste and a crook in the lot.
After Paton buried his beloved wife and infant son, he said,
I felt her loss beyond all conception or description, in that dark land. It was very difficult to be resigned, left alone, and in sorrowful circumstances; but feeling immovably assured that my God and father was too wise and loving to err in anything that he does or permits, I looked up to the Lord for help, and struggled on in His work…
I do not pretend to see through the mystery of such visitations – wherein God calls away the young, the promising, and those sorely needed for his service here; but this I do know and feel, that, in the light of such dispensations, it becomes us all to love and serve our blessed Lord Jesus so that we may be ready at his call for death and eternity.
It does. In our disappointment, it becomes us all to rest assured of our God’s wisdom and love.
Love Leads in the Opposite Direction
I’ve been camping in the land Exodus lately and was greatly impacted by Tim Keller’s sermon on chapter 19.
The Israelites are three months out of Egypt but further from the Promised Land than they were before they left.
God, for kind reasons of his own (Ex. 13:17), led the people in nearly the opposite direction of their destination and he took them into a desert. A mountainous, barren desert. A land far worse than Egypt.
I love how Keller explains this “history of grace,”
God says I’m going to take you over here, but I’m going to take you by way of a place that is farther from Egypt and a land that is worse than Egypt. And that’s where he meets them. And it is often so…
If you admit it, you’re further away from the the things you thought God would be giving you than you were when you trusted him and it seems like God is taking you in the opposite direction.
So often the history of grace in our lives follows this same path. God seems to be taking us away from where we thought we were going, but he’s still leading us to the Promised Land.
In other words, our disappointment is God’s appointment. That’s how God’s grace often comes.
Disappointment, His Appointment
It just so happens that the very same day I wept myself dry, I ran across this poem.
“Disappointment — His Appointment”
Change one letter, then I see
That the thwarting of my purpose
Is God’s better choice for me.
His appointment must be blessing,
Tho’ it may come in disguise,
For the end from the beginning
Open to His wisdom lies.
“Disappointment — His Appointment”
Whose? The Lord, who loves me best,
Understands and knows me fully,
Who my faith and love would test;
For, like loving earthly parent,
He rejoices when He knows
That His child accepts, UNQUESTIONED,
All that from His wisdom flows.
“Disappointment — His Appointment”
“No good thing will He withhold,”
From denials oft we gather
Treasures of His love untold,
Well He knows each broken purpose
Leads to fuller, deeper trust,
And the end of all His dealings
Proves our God is wise and just.
“Disappointment — His Appointment”
Lord, I take it, then, as such.
Like the clay in hands of potter,
Yielding wholly to Thy touch.
All my life’s plan in Thy moulding,
Not one single choice be mine;
Let me answer, unrepining —
“Father, not my will, but Thine.”
-Edith Lillian Young
No sugarcoating: “doing” disappointment this way is both a bitter pill and a sweet remedy. I cried hard last week. Coping with disappointment this way hurts my flesh. But as it does, it heals my soul.
Even when I don’t know why, I’m learning to change that one letter and see that His appointment is a better choice for me.
“For He performs that which is appointed for me…”
Job 23:14a
Today Sam turned 13. The “teen-scene” is new to all of us. But Sam has never been our puppet on a string. From day one- when I first held that stoic 6-month old in the the airport terminal- Sam has always been his own man.
C.S. Lewis called those things