We’ve all heard the words that break us. “I’m sorry, but we’re going to have to let you go.” “I don’t love you anymore, I want a divorce.” “We’re sorry to inform you that you have not been accepted.” “After further testing, we’ve found that your cancer has returned.”
We can all quote or remember the words spoken in those moments that we were shattered.
I remember ours. It happened while we were on our way to church after my wife had tried to call our daughter and a Sheriff’s Deputy answered her phone. “I’m sorry to inform you that your daughter has been in a serious accident and has been care flighted to the emergency room, where she is in critical condition.”
We’ve all had moments, days, or years where we’ve felt our lives have been burned to the ground and the only thing that remains are the ashes.
We all have expectations for how our lives will turn out and what our journeys will look like. Maybe the expectations only exist in our minds and are never actually expressed, but we have them all the same. These are our hopes and dreams, and sometimes our fears. But, they are also our disappointments when our story doesn’t follow the plot we had written.
When an expectation is not met, it becomes a loss. Many times that loss results in unexpected changes and directions in life. Maybe it was the loss of a career or marriage. Maybe it was a broken relationship or a child born with deformities. Disappointment comes in many forms, but all of them can be crushing if we’ve placed them on a pedestal.
The reality is each of us will have many disappointments in life. When we are in the middle of them, they all seem like more than we can handle, and many times they actually are.
Michelle and I have walked through disappointments. We’ve seen dreams that didn’t pan out (at least not in the way or in the timing we had expected), broken relationships we thought would be “forever” friendships, a miscarriage, and most recently, the tragic and sudden loss of our twenty-year old daughter. So yeah, we understand disappointment and grief.
It’s in the moments of having our dreams shattered that we find ourselves thrown into the harsh realities of life, stretched out on the rocks; battered, beaten, broken, and bruised. The ink on the pages of our story is smudged and barely recognizable. This is NOT how we planned it! It doesn’t look anything like we thought it should!
Michelle’s and my faith has taken a beating. Yet, it’s emerging stronger and with greater understanding than ever before. We are discovering, through experience, our faith isn’t meant to be born out of ignorance, fear, or what we see. Rather, its foundation is laid by how we worship when our outcomes don’t match up to our expectations.
The reality for those of us who call ourselves “followers or disciples of Christ” is that our Heavenly Father has His own set of expectations for us. He has given us a purpose while we exist in this microscopic moment on the timeline of eternity. We’re here for a short time to build His Kingdom and be His hands and feet and, when necessary, His voice to the world.
So, we stay firm in our resolve. Disappointment may come and try to shatter or break us, but we will keep our eyes on our destiny…a time, not too far in the distant future, when this world will no longer have any hold over us…where we will truly be free.
I love how C.S. Lewis explains it best:
“And as He spoke He no longer looked to them like a lion; but the things that began to happen after that were so great and beautiful that I cannot write them. And for us this is the end of all the stories, and we can most truly say that they all lived happily ever after. But for them it was only the beginning of the real story. All their life in this world and all their adventures in Narnia had only been the cover and the title page: now at last they were beginning Chapter One of the Great Story which no one on earth has read: which goes on forever: in which every chapter is better than the one before.”[i]
While the Chronicles of Narnia is a work of fiction, C.S. Lewis’ words, I believe, were meant to mirror another work that is NOT fiction, but the truth of our future written by John the Beloved but revealed by our heavenly Father,
“And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, ‘Behold, the dwelling place of God is with man. He will dwell with them, and they will be his people, and God himself will be with them as their God. He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away.’ And he who was seated on the throne said, ‘Behold, I am making all things new.‘” (Revelation 21:3-4 ESV)
My heart yearns for the other side of eternity. More now than ever. It’s my home and I cannot wait to be there. My disappointment and grief brought me to this place of hope. They could have delivered me to a darker place, a place devoid of light, joy, and peace, but instead of becoming lost in the darkness, I decided, I led and governed myself, to turn toward the light. I allowed my Savior to put me on a new path. I stopped resisting and I surrendered to His will and to His presence.
Our journey is not done. Remember C.S. Lewis said, this has “only been the cover and the title page.” Michelle and I are still a work in progress. Our marriage is not perfect because we are not perfect. Our children are not perfect, and our lives are far from it. We are living from valley to valley and from glory to glory. This is not our home, and it never will be. Every chapter will be better than the one before. Our story this side of eternity is still being written.
So is yours!
Peace.
If you would like to read more on this topic and others like it, check out my book:
[i] Lewis, C.S. The Last Battle. New York, New York: HarperCollins, 1956.
Finding Hope and Purpose in the Storm 
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