Disappointment Sucks

A few minutes ago, Muffin the Wonder Poodle crawled into my lap, curled up, and gazed at me lovingly. When I looked at her, I saw complete and total trust reflected back at me in her eyes.

I happened to be reading a section out of the Bible study I’m currently doing with a group of women at church. Today’s session was about God’s presence in my life. That He never leaves me. He doesn’t forget or ignore me. That when I’m mad and giving Him the cold shoulder, He doesn’t walk out in anger and never come back. And as I read those words and thought those thoughts, I wanted to look at God the way Muffin just looked at me.

And that hasn’t been easy lately. I know the power of God’s love for me, and I don’t doubt it. He’s carried me through so much—sorrow, pain, happiness, good things—and I don’t question that God is there, that He loves me, or that He’s active in my life and the lives of those around me. I see that; I know that. But lately the overwhelming feeling that has characterized my state of mind is disappointment. In myself. In God because He hasn’t given me what I wanted.

That disappointment stems from an inability to let go and completely trust God with the present AND the future. Completely trusting means letting Him have control, giving up ownership. And planner, boss, director that I am, letting Him lead—trusting Him enough to walk through the valley, the mountaintops, long periods of discontent, and great happiness—is hard. I want a plan I can mark off like a to-do list. I want to know if the deepest desires of my heart are in God’s big picture plan. The thing is, I don’t get that information. I’m on a need-to-know basis.

I don’t want to be a woman whose journey of faith is characterized by an aching, hollow disappointment. And I know it won’t be, because this is the road I have to walk through at this point in my life so that I can know God more fully, the “silence of God” as Andrew Peterson and Ben Shive put it. We aren’t called to understand everything, get everything we want, or always be happy. We’re called to live each day in dependence on Him. And even in my disappointment with myself and the fact I’m not getting exactly what I want when I want it, I can gaze at my God with eyes full of trust. Because He loves me; He’ll never leave me; and His ways are not my ways.