The One with the Hopes, Expectations, and Disappointments

Last year after I totaled my car, my brother took me out for dinner to make sure I was ok after the stress of the accident. He sat across from me and talked about what a year of trial it’s been for both of us but how faithful the Lord is. He lamented over the difficulties I’d faced all year but gently reminded me that the Lord was working in it. I smiled and thought about how eventful the year had been, but how despite everything, it didn’t feel like a year of trial at all. Homes had fallen through again and again, I had some really sad days, and then I totaled my car in the middle of the night. But in the midst of it all I was held fast by a peace and joy that banished the stress of those things faster than they could set in my heart. I felt closer to the Lord than ever.

2016 has been a different story. It’s been far less eventful than 2015 was, but it has beaten me down all the same and taken so many others with it. It’s been a series of one disappointment after another, some of them big, most of them small, but the build up has created a weight I can’t seem to lift anymore. Maybe it’s because my weights are still collecting dust in the corner, or maybe it is just too much. I see his faithfulness in the outskirts of my life, but the deepest trenches of my heart remain untouched. I dared to hope for some things this year, and one by one, they’ve been whisked away in front of me. The message I began to hear was clear. Those things aren’t meant for you. Stop hoping for them.

I’m used to living a life of second place and last calls, and it’s worn me down. I see how he loves others so well. I see how he speaks to them and chases them, and gathers them under his strong arms to feel safe, warm, and loved. He sounds like a great father - the perfect father. But I can’t help asking, “does he see me too?”

And even as I ask it, I know he does. I see it. He is faithful to show me over and over again that he sees me. But my wayward heart is always so reluctant to receive it. Does he see that I’m lonely? Does he see that I feel forgotten? Does he see that I feel unwanted? And can he really fill those spaces?

My life seems like a practice of laying down those questions before him. Asking him to not just answer them, but fill them. And I know he can and he does, but it always creeps back. This year when I brought these questions to him in trembling hands, what I got back was a resounding silence. In the wake of that bloated taciturnity, I strapped my weights to my back, wrapped tight 'round with bitterness, and carried on.

I confessed to my friend a hope I had as if it were a struggle to be ashamed of. She suggested I ask the Lord for it, and I immediately shied away. I thought about the heartache that started this year, which was painful enough, and how the same type of heartache ended the year and it all felt like a cruel joke. Surely I’m not meant to hope for those things and in my mind, the surest way to not get what I hope for is to ask for it. Mingled with that thought is always the idea that I’m selfish for asking anyway — that the Lord wants only my blind devotion and cares not for the things of my heart, nor should I.

I felt angry and isolated as this year came to a close.

But it was Christmas. It was warm and humid and felt nothing like it should, but it was Christmas all the same and something in my heart began stirring. This idea that there’s a joy in this season that has nothing to do with the presents or the excitement or the mess of a year preceding it. I had put on my armor, prepared for the battle of walking in melancholy during my favorite season, but something else happened instead. I sat on my couch looking at our stunningly lit tree and He was there. It wasn’t a knock out moment, and He imparted no words of wisdom or comfort when his Spirit fell in the room. He simply - was - with me, and it was enough.

We too often live in this space of cleaning up before expectation. I had avoided prayer, thinking mine were unworthy to be heard because of my resentment. I wouldn’t let him touch the tender places because I had to tidy them up first. Surely he was disappointed and would withhold love until I had made myself right.

It’s anti-gospel and my mind knows that, but life-long routines are hard broken, and my heart shouts it all the same. As this year has drawn to a close and the promise of a new one rises, He has proven faithful again and again over so many things I had counted lost. I wept tears of gratitude on a Sunday night looking at all the grace and sweet gifts he had given in the last two weeks and felt his presence fall again as if to say, “I know, my love, I know.” He doesn’t always say “yes,” and in fact, He’s said “no” and “not yet” far more often this year than not, but we find our Yes in Jesus anyway, and our hopes are safe there.

We try to white-knuckle our faith, and if we’d just stop and be honest, the Lord could work in our stony hearts and broken flesh much easier. It’s a slow and painful process as he chips away the disappointments, the wickedness, and the brokenness and smooths it over with the Blood of the Lamb, but he is faithful to do it.

If you’re still struggling with the disappointments this year has brought you, and if I can keep you for just a moment longer, friends, please consider this following thought. I’ve tried to find the source and have been unable to do so (if you know where it’s from, please let me know), but it’s truth pierces my heart and brings healing each time I come across it again:

"Oftentimes, we couch our potential disappointments and losses with false comforts and assurance. 'Surely this will come to pass…Surely this time it will be different…Things will all be okay, as soon as I have….This apology will come, and then everything will be as it once was…of course God will not withhold this (thing not promised ) from me…' All these may carry strands of legitimate and good hope, possibly some truth. But deep down, the roots of idolatry are hard dug. We begin a worship of ‘when', an expectancy of peace when ‘this comes to pass’, rather than a worship of 'and if not, He is still good.' We need not couch our fears and losses with what may not be. He is faithful, and He is faithful, and that couch is sufficient to catch our fall."

I’ve written so many times on the “if nots” and I would recoil from sounding like a broken record, except that sometimes a broken record is what we need. I know for me, the repetition is a good and right encouragement and maybe it will be for you too.

Friends, he is faithful, and he is faithful, and he loves us in our mess. And that has couched all my disappointments in this year’s end. He is faithful, and he is faithful, and he loves us still.