So I’m wondering how other folks handle the disappointments of life. We seem to do different ones in different ways around our family. But it seems the important ones, the ones which come after we have thought and planned and prayed and even felt some security in the outcome, those are the ones we handle best. I’d like to think we are just strong or pragmatic or have such wisdom and foresight that nothing can surprise us. But the truth is at times we are as clueless as a box of rocks.
We have goals and desires which we believe are given by the Lord and we understand the steps required to move in the right direction to see them come to fruition. SO when we move along those lines and a door is shut it is not crushing defeat but just a course adjustment. God desires for us to be willing not necessarily wonderful. He will use the most inept, untalented tool in the box if it is willing. And though we don’t know much, we are willing.
In our family some one of us at one time or another has been a teacher, a preacher, a baker and a candy maker. We’ve worked on bikes and mikes and cars and planes. We’ve made bread, sewed with thread, made the bed (literally!) and swept the floor. And we have done so very, very, much more. At seasons in our lives we have been closely supervised by the presence of the Lord and at others seem to have been allowed to float free.
And in all those seasons we have experienced joys and sadness, victories and defeats, triumphs and disappointments. Some things we have honored the Lord greatly in. Some things we have been ashamed at our lack of care and taking things for granted. Handling the disappointments is hard because you immediately want to assess blame or fault or define the point of failure. Yet many times, as today, what we perceive as a roadblock is more probably the protective grace of the mighty hand of God.
He knows. He knows what is best, what is right, what is pure and what He has blessed. He sees when and where and who and what is best and He knows why. It is very difficult to call it disappointment sometimes. For when you pray with intimacy, fervency and clarity, it is easier to know ‘Thy will be done is being done’. And easier to say Thank Y ou Lord Jesus!
So I’m wondering how other folks handle the disappointments of life.