Get Used to Disappointment

I recently applied for a job I was sure was designed just for me. The skills required could not have been more perfect, the time of our financial need could not be greater and the conditions of the job so flexible and ideal for my family’s situation that I suspected this was surely a “God Thing”. Yesterday I got a call that I didn’t get the job.



How could this happen? What is God trying to tell me? Given my lack of humility sometimes, I imagine He could be telling me a whole BUNCH of things. But after a brief sympathy-seeking phone call to my husband and a disappointing trip to the refrigerator, I came to a simple answer. I am not a sum of my talents or skills. I am not defined by the jobs I do or where I live or how much I make. My job in this life remains the same no matter my circumstances. My job is to love God and love people. That’s it and that doesn’t change. Next life crisis, please.

What I am tempted to do, however, is to revisit those things in my life when they don’t make sense and engage in the exhausting mental gymnastics of asking, “Why?”. Don’t get me wrong, self-examination is a necessary thing. I need to learn from my mistakes and I still make plenty. Proof that older is not necessarily wiser, sometimes things are clearly a disaster of my own making.

But sometimes things just are.

I received an email from a friend who is pleading for prayer as she wrestles with a disabling anxiety disorder. In the quest for healing she and others around her ask, “Why?”--even suggesting that a lack of faith may somehow be to blame for God withholding a cure or an answer. But can it be that there are simply struggles we have that are beyond our control, illness or disabilities or tragedies of nature or inflicted cruelties of others that come our way simply because sometimes things just are?

I love the book The Princess Bride. In the battle of swords between the mysterious Man in Black and the spaniard Inigo Montoya, an amazed Inigo asks his opponent, “Who are you? I must know!” The Man in Black simply responds, “Get used to disappointment.” It makes me laugh every time--probably because it’s so true--and probably because I have a strange sense of humor.

But in a fallen world, groaning, as the Bible metaphorically says, under the pains of childbirth, awaiting The Day it is finally no longer at enmity with God, the fact is that there is fallout. There is disappointment. We will not always have the answers to our every question. Bad things happen to us all. Our bodies give out, our minds will fail us, nature will wage war on us. And sometimes we don’t get the job we want.

But there is good news.

Our God is a God of transforming power. He takes the seeming failure on a cross and transforms it into life-giving restoration for all humanity. He takes the hurts of our lives and allows others the opportunity to exercise their gifts of love toward us and allows us, in turn, to offer empathy toward those who suffer as we have. He takes our imperfect, messy and broken lives and through Christ, holds us to Himself with an eternal purpose--to make us Whole.

So what does God want from us when the mechanics of our seemingly well-oiled life come to a shrieking halt and it doesn’t make sense? So a job didn’t turn out the way I’d hoped? So what. One thing I know. One thing never changes. Love God, love others. That much, at least, still makes sense.