Disappointed - Grow On!

Have you not known? Have you not heard? The Lord is the everlasting God, the Creator of the ends of the earth. He does not faint or grow weary; his understanding is unsearchable. He gives power to the faint, and to him who has no might he increases strength. Even youths shall faint and be weary, and young men shall fall exhausted; but they who wait for the Lord shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings like eagles; they shall run and not be weary; they shall walk and not faint. (Isaiah 40:28-31 ESV)

"Sometimes when you get disappointment it makes you stronger."  (David Rudisha) 

If I relied solely upon my own strength and knowledge, I surely would become disappointed with many an "unwanted" or "unanticipated" outcome in my life - how about you? The "big picture" as some call it is just not plain enough for us to always see - try as we might, we might get glimpses at it, but to keep it in constant focus is a hard, hard thing. There have been times when I experienced disappointment, not always because of anything I had control over, but because of some action of others, circumstances outside of my sphere of influence, or just sheer natural disaster. Disappointment is part of life - we cannot always avoid it - but we can use it to help us grow stronger!

I had a marriage fail, but I don't live in the shadow of that disappointment any longer. I have grown from it and am stronger because of what I took away from ten years of struggling to hold it together and all the years since. I have lost jobs, not because of a lack of aptitude or hard work, but because of circumstances beyond my control. I have learned to rely upon the provision of God even more than I did before, not because I lost the job, but because I finally realized all the "best plans" of man are but a speck on the map of God's perfect plan for mankind. I have seen my kids do things I wish then hadn't, feeling a little disappointed they had to walk that course in life. I didn't beat myself up as a mother, but found my love for them just grew in proportion to the depth of my pain!

We don't have to live in the shadow of our disappointments in life. God has provided a means by which they can be transformed into opportunities for our growth. It begins with unmeasured amounts of his grace and then it multiplies into all the various things we need to not only survive the disappointment, but to be left stronger by it. I don't always get how God does this in us, but I know it to be true. I don't always understand why it takes disappointment to help us to grow a little deeper, but maybe it is because if we always had things "just right" in life, we'd become complacent or "flabby around the edges". I trust God to renew when my energies are at their end. I rely upon his "push" to move me forward when I am getting way too bogged down into the "mully-grubs" of disappointment. He isn't going to leave us in our place of disappointment, but sometimes we choose to dwell there just a little too long!  Just sayin!

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Steel in your convictions

Is that a wolf I hear?

Sentimental gush