Dealing With Disappointment
Posted on: February 5, 2016
- In: Everyday Life | Faith
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I can do all things in him who strengthens me.
~ Philippians 4:13*
Ottawa residents know that winter weather doesn’t always line up with Winterlude, the big winter festival held in the nation’s capital from late January till the middle of February.
Some years, ice sculptures end up dripping in too-mild temperatures. Or snow has to be manufactured to create a winter playground. We’re hoping for the best when we check out the ice carvings on the weekend.
But, as they say, you can’t always get what you want.
When my in-laws visited us in Pickering at Christmastime a number of years ago, my niece hoped to build snowmen and snow forts and have a snowball fight, but we had no snow over the Christmas holidays that year.
Sometimes we have to deal with minor disappointments like these. And sometimes we have to deal with major disappointments: we interview for a dream job, but it doesn’t pan out; we’re up for an award colleagues feel we deserve, but we don’t win; we put in an offer on a house we love, but it’s rejected; we love someone, but they don’t return our feelings.
Wouldn’t it be easy to rail at the selection committee for the job or the award or fume at the homeowners’ choice or vow not to care for someone again?
God knows and hears us when we’re frustrated and discouraged:
You have kept count of my tossings;
put my tears in your bottle!
Are they not in your book? (Psalm 56:8)
He will bring healing to our hearts if we call on him:
The LORD is near to the brokenhearted,
and saves the crushed in spirit. (Psalm 34:18)
He heals the brokenhearted,
and binds up their wounds. (Psalm 147:3)
And when we struggle to move past the disappointment or rejection, the Lord is there to strengthen us:
(F)ear not, for I am with you,
be not dismayed, for I am your God;
I will strengthen you, I will help you,
I will uphold you with my victorious right hand. (Isaiah 41:10)
I pray that we would look to God to find the strength and courage to move forward, remembering his words in Jeremiah 29:11:
For I know the plans I have for you, says the LORD, plans for welfare and not for evil, to give you a future and a hope.
(*Scripture quotes taken from the Holy Bible, Revised Standard Version, 2nd Catholic Edition.)
A Catholic Convert in Ottawa 