This one is for those who feel a little behind on dreaming and goal-planning for a new year. This one is for those who are sitting paralyzed in an attic of boxed-up disappointments, feeling the clutter of the crowded past year.

I am very slowly learning that the best gift I can offer my husband and children is the plodding progress of my own soul. As I am learning to healthily deal with my own disappointments, I am modeling for my family an honest way forward into the presence of the Lord. As I identify and speak openly about the two ditches I can fall into when dealing with disappointments or hopes deferred, I offer my children a map towards their own maturity.

Two Ditches when Dealing with Disappointment

Every year is full of its own delights and disappointments. As a culture, we have a place-holder for the joyful moments, the celebrations, the goals achieved, the awards received. We smile for insta-gram and post about them. We brag on them in our Christmas letters. But what about the dead ends, the disappointments, and the setbacks?

When we deny that they happened or ditch them too quickly, we end up carrying them much longer in the transmuted form of distance from God. After all, he knows our hearts and our desires, so pretending or preemptively trying to move on serves neither him nor us. 

On the other hand, we may be tempted to drag them along with us everywhere When we hold on to the negative emotions that comes with disappointment too long, they have a way of warping our view of reality and our approach towards God.

I’ve tried both over the years and am very slowing learning a better way through the mire of disappointment: to dry them out in the warmth of his presence and the light of his truth.

This is terribly uncomfortable at first, as it requires admitting our own fears and perceived failures. It requires a level of intimacy and vulnerability with God that feels risky. Yet, I am learning though experience that his delight begins to disarm all my false coping mechanisms. 

In the security of the trinitarian love, I can let out the unruly emotions and speak the irrational lies. He receives them and swallows them up in truth and grace, with all the calmness of one who has long ago settled all my accounts. 

It takes awhile for the old disappointments to dry up, as I imagine it would take fresh fruit to fully dehydrate in the sun naturally.  But, at the end of this process, he has seeds to plant in my life and I have space to dream again with Him.

Sun-dried Disappointments

Lay out your losses before me. 
We can count them one by one. 
Don’t hide or grasp them tightly;
Bring them out to dry in the sun. 

Disappointments left in darkness 
Tend to fester or mold or grow. 
Naming them in my presence 
Invites me into all I fully know. 

You need not be brave with me.
I don’t want your stiff upper lip. 
I want your honest, alloyed tears;
I want you clinging to my hip. 

My purposes may elude you, 
But you must trust I am good. 
For I am God outside of time;
I don’t do things as you would. 

Your sun-dried disappointments
You may safely entrust to me. 
I’ll plant these seeds of sorrow 
To grow gardens you don’t see. 

So, open up your clenched soul;
Let me linger with you a spell. 
For even amidst your sadness,
I continue to do all things well. 

If you find yourself holding a clammy handful of past disappointments, perhaps it is time to bring them into the presence of a God who already knows them and who has good plans for them. His radiance, purity, and delight have the power to dehydrate those disappointments, making space for new dreams.