facing disappointment

At times I have looked back on my life, and found it a bit disappointing.  Disappointment is hard to cope with.  I suppose I didn’t expect to be divorced;  I didn’t expect that my husband would reject his Christian faith and drag me through a terrible marriage of conflict and emotional abuse; I didn’t expect to be the sole breadwinner for the family;  I didn't expect my life to produce poverty in such unequal measure to my hard work.  I didn’t expect to lose a child.

It’s taken me a long time to come to terms with my disappointing life. I have railed against God.  I felt that I sowed good seed, but harvested weeds. I sowed faithfulness and gathered betrayal.  I treated others as I would like to be treated, but discovered it provided people with opportunity to bully me.  There was so much call on all my resources for years on end, that eventually, I felt like a wasteland of broken reeds had grown up inside me;  watered with sorrow and blighted by strife.  At times, ignoble, faithless thoughts raced through my mind and caught like fouled fleece on the brambles of my heart. I doubted God’s provision for me.  I took my eyes off the example of Jesus and thought God owed me something for my obedience to Him.  I had always tried to do the right thing, and felt hard done by when everything seemed to go wrong.   

I looked for the wrong things from his hand and was disappointed and disillusioned when He didn’t provide them in the way I expected.  I asked for financial help;  there was none.  I asked for another husband and the chance of a relationship with a good and decent man, but instead, a married man preyed on my loneliness.   I asked for safety and provision;  I got bullying at work and the threat of my house being taken away.

It has been hard for me to realize that God will not give me back the fruitless years;  the years I harvested weeds;  the years the locusts ate. 

He gave me instead, His own self.

My ragged, faltering faith still declares that God is good.

My life was lumbered with these stones of inappropriate expectation. To throw off their weight,  I had to learn the way of acceptance;  acceptance of how things are;  of being content whatever my situation;  of giving thanks in all circumstances.  Difficult lessons.  But God doesn’t promise life will be easy;  he promises that He will always be with us;  strength in our weakness;  victory over evil;  to soar like eagles despite the weight of our disappointment and difficult problems.

This faith life will not let me go.  This barely understood, mysterious, unfathomed Spirit of God which long ago claimed my soul is a restless, defining, cleansing current, ever washing my grudging, faulty humanity in it’s refining tide.  It is the tide of God’s purpose;  ever wanting my soul to be as pure and full of love as His own. 

I would never have made room for it, if my circumstances were as replete and comfortable as I thought they should be.