You’re not alone if you struggle with disappointment. We’re all familiar with the painful feeling. So what should we do when the shards of shattered dreams pierce our hearts? How do we pick up the pieces and find peace? How do we readjust and keep going?
Let me tell you, those are the questions that I’ve been pondering over the last few years. I’m no stranger to disappointment, and I’m guessing you have your own heart hurting moments too. So today, we are going to answer those questions and seek peace and comfort in today’s blog post.
A little backstory on why I’m familiar with disappointment
I got engaged at the end of 2019, on a winter evening in Corpus Christi, Texas. I was visiting my husband’s family for the holidays. He popped the question by the fireside, with hot chocolate in hand, and Christmas lights around the backyard. It really doesn’t feel all that long ago, but so much has happened since then. And what happened after didn’t really go according to plan.
I grew up in California and my husband was from Texas. We met in Tennessee during college, so we’d get to date in person during the semesters and then do long distance during the breaks.
I loved spending semesters together and hated spending summers apart. So when we got engaged, I was so excited to spend January to May together at school, then just three months apart, then back together for the fall semester, and married that December. The long distance days would be over!
Things were going great, then the disappointment began
We had it all lined out. My husband would look for a ministry job during the summer. Once we knew where we would be living, I could start looking for an accounting job. We would have a beautiful New Year’s Eve wedding and then move into our first home together.
But our plans were utterly overturned, as I’m sure yours were too, by the pandemic in 2020. Instead of spending two semesters together, we were sent home from our college campus in March with no idea when we would be back together. Churches paused their in-person services, which means my husband couldn’t go try out for a job over the summer. We kept our wedding date, but we were uncertain where we’d be living, where we’d be working, and whether we’d be able to invite all our family and friends to our ceremony.
In the final month before our wedding, my grandfather passed away. My family tested positive for COVID, so we were isolated from each other in our separate bedrooms and we unable to attend his funeral. We ended up rearranging our wedding ceremony to protect our friends’ health, and we canceled our honeymoon. Then my husband’s grandfather passed away right after our wedding, and we weren’t able to go to that funeral, either. My husband was hired to preach in Missouri, but big corporations were hesitant to hire, meaning I still had no job lined up.
I felt overwhelmed by one disappointment after another
One of the hardest parts of this season was the pull between feeling guilty and grateful.
I was so grateful to finally be married to the man of my dreams. But I still struggled with the grief and pain of the pandemic and loss, and our canceled plans. I felt guilty for struggling with those feelings. Since the end result worked out—we got married—I constantly told myself, “I should only feel grateful.”
“Should” and “shouldn’t” hold us back from actually dealing with our disappointment
Do you have thoughts like these when you’re dealing with broken plans? Maybe you’ve said “it should have been like this,” or “this shouldn’t have happened,” or “I shouldn’t feel this,” and “I should only feel that.” I struggled with these thoughts throughout our whole engagement and well into the first two years of our marriage.
Eventually, after hashing out my feelings with my husband for I don’t even know what number of times, one day he looked at me and said, “What do you mean by shouldn’t?” I stared at him blankly and asked, “What do you mean?” He explained this to me.
I was so stuck on the shoulds and shouldn’ts that I was totally missing what was.
We shouldn’t have had to lose loved ones so close to our wedding.
We should have gotten to go on our dream honeymoon.
We shouldn’t have had to start off our marriage with all these “extra burdens.”
Those are the things I told myself. But what my husband helped me realize was should is the wrong word, and was is the correct one.
We lost loved ones close to our wedding. That was what happened.
We had to cancel our honeymoon. That was what happened.
And we didn’t start off our marriage with “extra burdens” like I thought. Instead, I had to accept that negative experiences are a natural part of life. If we had not experienced these, they would have been something else.
It’s easier to accept disappointment when we accept that little in life is certain
Very little in life is certain besides the hope of heaven and the certainty that life on earth is not going to be as perfect as life in heaven. Even though we don’t know exactly what difficulties we’ll face, it’s pretty certain that we will face difficulties. It’s not unjust or unfair per se. It just is.
I couldn’t change the events that happened around me, but I could change my thoughts towards the events. So I sought out to develop thoughts that would help me stop avoiding my disappointment and instead help me move through my disappointment. Keep reading to see the three biggest thoughts that I changed.
Thought #1: I shouldn’t feel this way
I had to eliminate this thought because it wasn’t helping me confront my feelings. Telling myself “I shouldn’t feel this way” piled guilt onto myself for having a natural human reaction to hard events.
“I shouldn’t feel this way” was reactive in response to my disappointment. I would feel the disappointment and alarm bells would go off, saying no no no, let’s not feel that way because that doesn’t feel good.
So instead, I tried to develop a proactive thought that would help me move through my natural disappointment when I felt it coming on. You’re actually getting a taste of it as you read. Maybe you’ve already noticed the new thought popping up in our conversation today: this feeling is natural based on what happened.
When I accepted that disappointment was a natural feeling that stemmed from broken dreams, I felt a huge weight lift from my shoulders. It eliminated the guilt I felt and gave me some space to be sad when I needed to be sad. And all the sudden, actually taking the time to feel that disappointment helped me move through it quicker. Now, instead of feeling disappointment mixed with guilt, I could just focus on letting my body recover from the disappointment.
Thought #2: I’m going to be stuck here forever
I remember feeling so discouraged some days because I was “still” disappointed. On our first anniversary, I was “still” disappointed that our wedding day was mixed with joy and grief. We rebooked our honeymoon and had to cancel it a second time, and I was “still” disappointed that we didn’t get to go.
I felt like I was stuck in the sadness, but really, the only thing causing me to be stuck was the artificial timeline I had in my head for healing. Instead of processing my disappointment and moving forward organically, I had given my feelings and expiration date that I didn’t have the capacity to meet.
Instead, I developed this new thought: there is no timeline for healing. Or, alternatively, I can take the time I need to heal.
When I stopped pressuring myself to heal, I was surprised to see that healing actually came pretty naturally. I’m not even sure how it happened. Something about the combination of acknowledging that my feelings were natural combined with removing the timeline to stop feeling that way actually gave way to my brain being ready to choose new feelings.
Thought #3: I don’t know what to do; I feel hopeless
I was plagued by this thought for a long time. I thought I was totally at the mercy of my emotions, as if they were a scary animal constantly attacking me. But then I realized, God made me to be powerful, and He gave me the power of choice.
I think it takes a while for the power of choice to really sink in. We go from being infants with no choice to children with limited choice. Our parents take care of our needs and give us opportunities to practice our choices (do you want PB&J for lunch or mac and cheese?). But when we reach adulthood, all the sudden we’re responsible for all our choices. And the power of choice isn’t limited to what we eat or wear. It extends to what thoughts we’ll allow into our mind, what our reactions will be when certain events happen, and what we choose to do when we feel a certain way.
Embracing the power of choice changed my life. You see, I couldn’t necessarily choose to not feel the natural emotions that came with disappointment. We’re not robots, so the goal isn’t to find a robotic switch to turn off emotion. But I could choose the thoughts I had in response to this event, and choosing different thoughts eventually led to different emotions.
That’s what I want you to realize, too. You hold the power of choice, and you can exercise your powers by developing new thoughts that will help you, not hurt you.
Healthy thoughts help us move through disappointment
Take a look at the thoughts below. Pick your favorites and write them down somewhere you’ll return to them, or use them to inspire the personal thoughts that will help you confront your disappointment.
I will grow and gain wisdom through this experience.
I will not be defeated by the circumstances.
I will be victorious through Jesus.
And the biggest one for me: I’m acquiring the strength I need to face my next difficult circumstances.
Remember what I mentioned earlier? It is certain that life on earth is not going to be as perfect as life and heaven. So even after we’ve faced our feelings and moved through our disappointment, we have to ask what will we face next?
The goal isn’t to become immune to disappointment
I used to think that eventually I would come to this place where I finally got through the grief of losing my grandfather and changing our wedding plans and not having our honeymoon, and then I would have finally made it. But let me tell you, Even though I can say today that I have moved through those disappointments, I haven’t “made it.”
Sister, we haven’t made it until we’re standing at the gates of heaven. And between now and then, we will continue to be challenged with new circumstances that will challenge our thoughts and feelings. So, if you’re looking to reach the stage of life, when you are no longer disappointed, then…well…you’re about to be disappointed again.
I encourage you to sit with the idea that the disappointment you’re experiencing right now is giving you the strength you need for the next time your dreams are broken. And so the cycle repeat each time you’re disappointed, making you stronger and stronger. Does that mean we’re hopeless? Absolutely not!
When you buy into the truth that each disappointing season will increase your strength, you’ll realize just how capable you are of handling the hard stuff. No, it’s not that we’ll be guaranteed less hard days or disappointing seasons. It’s just that we’ll see the pockets of blessings that those seasons unexpectedly bring.
Disappointing days bring us another day closer to heaven’s gates, just as much as the blissful days do. A bad day does not slow down your journey to heaven. And that’s the biggest dream, right? Hearing our Father say “well done good and faithful servant” after a lifetime of ups and downs.
And what’s exciting is we are in total control of that dream because of the same power of choice that helps us choose our thoughts.
Despite the disappointments we face, there is one thing we have total control over
We can use our power and choose to become a Christian, live a faithful life, and eventually receive an eternal home with the Lord.
God is ready to save us through the blood of Jesus, who died once for all people’s sins. Jesus already won the battle for our salvation. Now we just have to fight the battle of personal sin. If we stand firm and we are victorious in our battle, then nothing can break our heavenly dream.
“For I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.” — Romans 8:38-39
For this reason, we can find the silver lining in our broken dreams. We can find peace and comfort knowing that the disappointments we experience will make us stronger and more capable of handling whatever curveballs we face between now and the ultimate heavenly dream.
So if you’re struggling with disappointment, remember these three thoughts
- What you’re feeling is natural based on what happened.
- There is no timeline for your healing.
- You hold the power of choice.
Want to continue the conversation about dealing with disappointment, adjusting to adulthood, and leaning into our femininity as daughters of God? Click here to subscribe to my exclusive email content and comment below so I know you read today’s post.
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