disappointment – Living de Good Life

“The just shall live by faith.” “For we walk by faith, not sight.” “And whatever you ask in prayer, you will receive, if you have faith.” “And without faith it is impossible to please him.” “So faith comes from hearing, and hearing through the word of Christ.”

“Faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things we cannot see.” This biblical definition of faith is found in Hebrews 11:1.

Faith, according to dictionary.com, is: “confidence or trust in a person or thing; belief that is not based on proof.”

I have been a believer for many, many years, based on having asked Jesus to forgive my sins and asking Him to be my Savior and Leader. Faith comes in believing that if you repent and ask for forgiveness, He grants forgiveness (1 John 1:9 “If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.”). But, is that enough? Is that all there is?

Truly living the life of a believer is living in faith and trust of the One who has forgiven you. That first step of faith is all-important, but it is just THE FIRST STEP! You must then learn to trust Him (Proverbs 3:5-6 “Trust in the Lord with all your heart and do not lean on your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge Him and He will direct your path.”).

TRUST HIM! Well, if I am trusting Him to save me from Hell and take me to Heaven, that’s a BIG trust, right? Yes, but sometimes we find it more difficult to trust in the day-t0-day things that we encounter than in our eternal destination. Why is that?

Can I trust Him when people in my life disappoint me? Can I trust Him when I am afraid? Can I trust Him when I get bad news? Can I trust Him with my earthly future? “Just have faith”, they say. I say, “it is not that easy”, even though it should be.

We must learn to trust Him with the daily things. How do we do that? Well, I am going to share with you what I am learning, so come along on my journey!

Proverbs 3:5-6 is pretty clear when it says “Trust in the LORD with ALL your heart.” Trusting with all your heart leaves no room for doubt. When you sit on your dining room chair, do you have any doubt at all that it will not collapse? When you go out to start your car, do you have any doubt that when you put the key into the ignition and turn, that it will start? This NO DOUBTING is what this means. ALL YOUR HEART!

Then, there is the go-with phrase “and do not lean on your own understanding”. This is a tough one for me. I am an analyzer. I am a thinker and I like to think that I am reasonably intelligent. But, the Lord has been showing me in recent days and weeks that I cannot trust my own understanding. This is really a difficult lesson for me. But you see, if I trust my own understanding, that means I am not trusting God with my WHOLE heart! Deductively, if I trust God with ALL my heart, that doesn’t leave room for trusting anything or anyone else and it definitely doesn’t leave room for fear or the “what ifs”.

So, I began looking back at my life…years of looking back. I see two basic avenues: He has been faithful and good to me; and, many, many times I have been anything but faithful. He has been faithful when I wasn’t faithful. He has blessed me even though I didn’t deserve blessing. And the trouble in my life has largely been brought on by the times that I “leaned on my own understanding”.

So, if these are the two choices: Trust Him with ALL my heart, OR, lean on my own understanding…and I don’t want history to repeat itself, I will NOT lean on my own understanding, right? So let’s look at the day-to-day issues. We all have areas of our life that make us wonder what God is doing. We want to see the future. We want to see that it all turns out o.k. But, look back at the biblical definition as well as the dictionary.com definition: what is the common theme? Faith is having confidence in what we hope for without sight and not based on proof. There is no fear in confidence.

Dwelling on fear and the “what ifs” is a detriment to a life of faith (I am currently working on a post about the “what ifs”). It is impossible to say you trust God if you are concerning yourself about the “what ifs”. Remember, your WHOLE HEART!

My best advice to you is to make two lists: first, remembrances of God’s faithfulness to you in the past. There are several times in the Old Testament that God’s people set up “altars of remembrance” so that they could remind themselves and their children of God’s faithfulness.

Philippians 4:8-9 says “Finally, brethren, whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are honest, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good report; if there be any virtue, and if there be any praise, think on these things.” The second list is truths from God’s Word. A list of Who and what is TRUE, HONEST, JUST, PURE, LOVELY, of GOOD REPORT, VIRTUOUS, and PRAISEWORTHY will crowd out any room for doubt and worry!

Preparing both of these lists will take time, but it will be time well spent and an investment into your faith journey and your mental, emotional and spiritual well-being. I am going to commit to sit down and write down my own “altar of remembrances”. This will be a list that when I am struggling, I can go to and remind myself of the times in my life that He has been faithful, even though I didn’t know at the time what He was doing.

Secondly, I am going to sit down and make a list of Truths on which to meditate…mostly about the Truth of Who God is. These lists will be readily available to me when I need to fill my mind with truth and to crowd out the doubt and fear and the “what ifs”.

In closing, I leave you this: He is the One Who knows the future. I can’t see even one moment ahead of the one I am presently living. Doesn’t it make sense to trust the One Who is already there and knows what it holds? Doesn’t it make sense to fill our minds with Truth and crowd out the fear and the “what-ifs”?

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I use this photo as a real life example of the contrast of death of a dream and the beauty of the small gifts in life.

We all deal with disappointments in life. Sometimes it feels like some of us have to deal with more disappointment than others. There are many things that can disappoint us. Our lives might not be turning out how we had envisioned they would. Perhaps, a devastating blow comes out of nowhere, like the loss of love, job or another sudden loss. But, I believe there is one truth about disappointments that we all share: How we view life’s disappointments will determine how we recover.

This post is kind of an “aside” to my previous post “Death of a Dream” Parts 1 and 2 and yet it is also a continuation. Death of a dream is one cause of disappointment, as it has been in my case. However, there truly are many causes of disappointment, some of which I have named above, but I know there are probably as many causes as there are people out there!

But, whatever the cause, disappointment left unchecked can lead to sadness, depression and despair. However, disappointment can also spur you on to a new vision, a new plan, and a new hope. It’s all in how you see it and your determination not to live there.

Now I know that some disappointments are much more difficult to deal with than others. The disappointment that led me to write my “Death of a Dream” posts was devastating and life-altering to me. It caused me much pain, many tears, and a feeling of hopelessness.

The sunset, depicting the end of one day…with the hope of a new day just hours away.

Thankfully, that sadness and hopelessness has worked its way into the ability to see and develop a different dream, or many dreams. One way that happened for me was to take the advice of someone very near and dear to me. In general terms, their advice was to accept what is and not expect anything more than what is. For instance: a dog will always act like a dog and never like a bird; a cow will not act like a horse, and a bull will never act like a kitty cat. So, I had to see my situation for what it was and learn to accept what was.

This was not an easy task. The dreams of “what could be” will linger as long as you give them life. When I determined that the dream of what could be was truly dead, it then freed me up to accept what is and to make a new dream based on that reality. I suppose that is survival mode kicking in?

There has been a running joke with some people who know me. My blood type happens to be B+…and it has been the joke how perfect that is because I have a “be positive” personality…most of the time. However, when my dream of what could be died, I felt no positivity…only sadness and disappointment.

But, being who I am, I could not live there. First, I am a daughter of the King of Kings and I believe in His sovereignty. This means that I believe He loves me and that He has a plan for me. His Word tells me that He will work all things together for my good and for His glory (Romans 8:28). So, when disappointment comes…and it will, I am human and must process it with my human emotions. However, my human emotions are not the last word.

I believe that if my God allows something in my life, even if I don’t know the purpose for it, I must trust Him. I must believe that He knows what He is doing. I can’t, as a mere human, see all that He is working on and I have to leave “being God” to God!

So, how do I do this? First, I fill my mind with Truth that reminds me that this was allowed into my life for some reason. It is what it is and so I must now find a way to move on. That “moving on” can take a short amount of time, or it can take a very long amount of time. But, my mind is key to my recovery. Philippians 4:8 puts it like this: “...whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable — if anything is excellent or praiseworthy–think on these things.”

Sunrise…the hope of a new day has dawned…however, what will be is still a bit foggy…

Once my mind has settled on the fact of what is…I now move to the “what can be” stage. In my situation, the death of one of my dreams was quite devastating to me, but as the weeks and months have passed, I have found a new way to live without that particular dream. It has freed me up so much to see little things as blessings….little individual dreams, if you want to see it that way.

Another much lesser example has happened this week. Besides being a writer at heart, I am also a photographer. Perhaps this is because I would describe myself as a visual person. Anyway, I often give photographic gifts to those I love.

I had a particular gift in mind and in order to make that gift I needed to locate some pictures I had taken in 2012 (not only 8 yeas ago but 3 computers ago!). I have searched through every device I have looking for these six photographs. Today, I finally had to come to the realization that I was not going to find them. So, now what?

I decided that I will just have to go to the places I took the original photographs and retake them…and then I thought, “Who knows? Maybe the new photos will even be better than the originals.” And then, hope dawned! It occurred to me that I could expand on what I had done in the past and even perhaps this could turn into a project that others might like to own as well! Amazing! Now instead of thinking of the drudgery of having to recreate something I had already created, I am excited at the prospect of creating something MORE than I had originally created!

That’s how HOPE works, at least for me. It’s a strange journey from sadness and despair, past anger, through mourning, to acceptance, and eventually to a new plan with new hope!

I hope in some small way, this post has been an encouragement to you. If it has, please comment below and let me know! That will be an encouragement to me!

Tag: disappointment

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