Responding to Disappointment

Last week was a challenge for me.  Someone sent me a message that not only shocked me, but it shook my world.  The message was not about me, but it affected me just the same because it was about someone I love and care about deeply.  I spent the week in a stupor.  You could say I was depressed by it.  I tried to shake it off, but I couldn’t.  It took me six days to finally reach a place where I could say, “I’m done. I will not let something I cannot control steal my joy for another day.  I have to find a way to move beyond this.” 

The situation involved broken relationships.  For six years, I and others have prayed that God would build a bridge between the four people involved.  And gradually, it looked as though God was restoring the years “the locust had eaten.”  As each tiny step was taken toward reconciliation, I rejoiced that God was moving mountains.  Only one of the four refused to participate, and I was hopeful that God would work a miracle some day and open this person’s heart. 

So it was such a shock to discover that one person who had seemed open to reconciliation really didn’t have that in his heart.  As I discovered, there is still a lot of hurt, anger and unforgiveness in him, and he is not willing, may never be willing, to let it go.

Receiving the message was a huge disappointment to me.  All the prayers, all the hope, all the love that went into trying to bring about peace and forgiveness between the persons involved went down the drain in an instant.  I was blindsided by it.  I let it get me down for far too long.  On the sixth day I finally realized that instead of reacting to the situation, I needed to be seeking the right response to it.  And the right response was not shunning the person who sent the message, nor boxing it up tidily and putting it away in the corners of my mind, nor sitting and soaking in sadness.  I needed to seek a godly response to it.  I thought about Joseph in the New Testament…he received painful and disheartening news when he first learned of Mary’s pregnancy.  He could have chosen to abandon her, but instead he looked for the wise, right response. What should be my wise, right response?

So, in thinking about what has happened and how to respond to it for now and in the future, I know that I can anticipate the good God can do in any situation AND I need to accept His timing, not my own.  I cannot give up and I will not give up.  I will continue to pray that God will work in the hearts of those concerned and leave it up to Him.  It’s far beyond me and my loved one’s abilities to fix.  This is God’s territory, and I am finally at peace with that.

Have you ever faced similar circumstances?  What was your response? How did you come to terms with it?