Faith in the Middle of Disappointment

If you’ve lived any life at all, made any plans or had any dreams, you will have faced disappointment. Perhaps they are small disappointments, like Starbucks being sold out of your favourite drink, or the weather making a mess of your weekend plans for adventure in the sun. Even my young girls have experienced these kinds of disappointments (a call for bedtime when they want to keep playing or a runny nose cancelling a play date). We also face big disappointments: the rejection letter from the school we really wanted to go to, the career we imagined not turning out exactly how we envisioned, the reality of being single when we thought for sure we’d be married already, the dream of having a family slowly fading as the years pass, the pain and disappointment of unfulfilled or broken promises…. 

Disappointment settles in our heart and if not processed can easily lead us down the road to bitterness and anger as we build walls around our heart to keep hope out. It leaves us doubting and questioning, shaking what we thought we knew. And when the disappointments seem to pile one on top of the other, we begin to ask, “Where is God? Does He care? Is He good?” And we are left to figure out how to walk in faith through the middle of disappointment.

I wish I could sit with each one of you readers and hear your story because I know you carry your share of disappointments. But this month I want to share Rachel’s story. What I appreciate about her perspective is that she is sharing while still living very much in the middle. There is no curly bow and ribbon tying this story all together. And she continues to choose faith.

Rachel is a dear friend of my sister. When I was putting together my list of names of women to interview, I mentioned to Catherine that I had wanted to write about disappointment. She said, “You should talk to my friend Rachel.” So, I talked to Rachel, going into the interview knowing very little about her or her story. And this is what I found: an authentic, deep-feeling, thoughtful woman who has walked an incredibly challenging life and still declares joy through the tears. A nurse in Northern BC who has a love of jumping into bodies of water, regardless of temperature (pretty sure that’s one of the reasons she and Catherine are such good friends! I’ll hold their towels…), Rachel does not shy away from asking the hard questions of herself, of others, and of God.

The first disappointments Rachel and I talked about where in regards to her childhood. She has spent a good portion of her adulthood unlearning coping mechanisms that she had to develop in a childhood that held very little emotional security. Multiple tumultuous marriages of her parents forced her inward when the outer environment was not safe. She experienced again and again the disappointment of unmet needs by her parents. Yet it was in these very formative years that God began to pursue Rachel’s heart with a tender relentlessness that would lay the foundation of a deep knowing faith that would last. He held her close when she needed someone to cling to and provided the security she needed to get through those years.

As Rachel entered adulthood, she pursued a degree in nursing as it provided a practical help to people. She saw it as a skill set that she could utilize for oversees missions. And so came the next set of disappointments. She wrapped much of her hope, expectation and identity into the dream of long term missions and the hope of marrying. So when what was supposed to be a year or longer mission in Gambia was cut short because of an unhealthy mission organization and a tumultuous first relationship, everything she thought she knew was shaken up. She was left crying out “God, I thought I was sure!” This disappointment led her to doubt she could hear God’s voice because what had previously seemed so clear was now muddied.

Upon returning home early from that oversees mission, Rachel had difficulty finding work. She was coming back spiritually stuck, feeling broken and crippled. The disappointments of job after job not working out compounded into an identity crisis. She was trying to put her hope and stock into circumstances which led to more pain and increased disappointment all while hoping for redemption. The depression and anxiety she experienced in her childhood increased in severity. However, rather than letting these things overwhelm her or just brushing them aside, she began to learn to sit with and process the deep feelings. It has been found that unprocessed emotions have a negative physical impact on our bodies. She shared this quote with me from Edwin Markham: “Sorrows come to stretch out spaces in the heart for joy.”

Six years ago, Rachel moved into Northern BC to take care of ailing grandparents. Having walked through several years of job uncertainty, she felt led to pursue a career as a Nurse Practitioner. Working part time and beginning her studies, her teachers were impressed by her marks and often commented how she would do really well in this field. 3/4’s of the way through the program, Rachel recognized the symptoms of burn out. She struggled to handle the stress of the program. During her practicum, anxiety would cause her to freeze up. Twice she passed out and had seizures. Her mind would go blank on material she knew so well. The inner journey she was on began to spill over. Growing increasingly embarrassed and ashamed, it became too overwhelming, leaving her unable to move, to think, to act. Rachel decided to take a break from the program. She began to examine her life and ask the Lord questions like “What gives me life? Where is there hope and beauty? What are the things or relationships that rob me of joy?” Her deep desire was to be walking with God towards the light and life He had for her. She realized this path towards nurse practitioner was not what was best for her. She let that dream go.

Six months after reaching a decision to let go of this career pursuit, she received an email from the nurse practitioner program. They were informing her she would be out of the program if she did not register for another course. They suggested she pursue a masters in nursing and take a different stream. Her heart jumped a little. She began to think: “May I haven’t failed. Maybe it’s not late. Maybe this hasn’t been a waste of time and money. Maybe I can do this. Maybe this is what I should be doing.” As she began to discern this with the help of others, she realized that the motivation was wrong. She didn’t want to be a failure. She wanted to feel like she could hear God’s voice and respond to it. And so she closed that door.

She has continued to work as a nurse and currently works in a job that has been the best in all her career as a nurse. It is a place where her she feels her skills are useful, what she brings to the table is needed and wanted, a place with good leadership and healthy team dynamics. However, up until last August when she began her current job, Rachel had experienced disappointment again and again in dysfunctional and unhealthy work environments. She loved the work that she was doing, but struggled to find a place where she could thrive. Doubts from her childhood began to resurface as she asked herself. “What’s wrong with me? Is it me? What is it about me? Am I able to do this? Are these things that people have said about me that have hurt so deep, are they true?” Rachel sees how God has placed her in this career, but there was always a deeper longing for healthy community and connection that seemed to go unmet.

There have been disappointments from unhealthy faith communities. There have been disappointments in relationships and singleness when she longed for companionship.  There have been disappointments in continued brokenness within her biological family.

When Rachel moved to Northern BC, she met Ryan. They have been married now for four years. And it is in this context that she continues to face her biggest disappointment. She was already in her mid 30’s when they married, and they both desired a family. Rachel has carried with her for most of her life the deep desire and dream to be a mom and create a healthy family, breaking the patterns found in her own childhood. And so they only waited a few months before deciding to be intentional about conceiving. And it hasn’t happened. She has endometriosis and yet has been told that it is not severe and should not be hindering conception. All the diagnostics have been run, and they have found no reason why it shouldn’t be happening.

And so Rachel grieves and hopes at the same time.

Every day she is monitoring hormone levels. She has cut out caffeine. Sex has become something that requires a level of physical, emotional, and spiritual health and connection with herself, God and Ryan that can be challenging to achieve on top of the pressures of other life stressors. Intimacy but also getting the timing right has forced her and Ryan to focus hard on building their marriage. And still, every month she bleeds and her heart aches and she feels the ticking of the clock. If a woman has not conceived at least once by her 40’s, it is very rare she will ever conceive. The grief and disappointment of a dream that seems to be slipping through her fingers brings her to her knees.

Rachel and Ryan also began an adoption process one year into their marriage. They remain open to how God wants to build their family. This too has been a challenging journey. Recently approved to adopt domestically from within the foster system, the decisions now lie with someone else who will basis decisions off of checklists and profiles that can seem clinical and cold. And so they wait. The odds of it happening are low and seems more and more out of reach. There is a greater need for foster homes that are safe and loving. The extra training and significant life changes they would have to make to accommodate certification as a foster home are a hurdle they now face and consider.

Rachel and I talked a lot about holding the tension between letting go of a dream and living with open hands for what God might do. Grief and hope. Actively trying to conceive while also letting go of control. Living with disappointment but not letting it make you cynical. How continuing to move forward means a vulnerability and potentially future disappointment.

“My relationship with God looks like continuing to, as far as it depends on me, to be honest with God, and with myself and those closest to me. Being honest about what hurts. And, you know, when I’m angry or frustrated or hurting, to just being able to be gut-wrenchingly honest about how painful it is. When I’m able to do that, that is when God meets me in the ways I most need it. I mean, that is the gift of tears, isn’t it. If we can’t be vulnerable, we never know what it is to be loved, or be hurt and be comforted afterwards…. It is so easy to get lost in discouragement and sadness and focusing on what is hard and painful. And what I don’t have, what hasn’t been realized. It’s so easy to worry, to think back to past things that have been hurtful, to focus on those, to dwell on them, to constantly analyze myself and others, trying to figure it out. If I can just understand it enough I’ll be able to move on. And that’s just not true. There’s a lot of things I just don’t fully understand. And I need to be okay with that.”

For Rachel, meditating and memorizing scripture has been a refuge right from childhood. She has found solace in written prayers and liturgies as she responds, being able to speak truth and allowing space for her heart to catch up. It is this relationship, His word and her response, that has been her lifeline and why she can still declare her faith in God.

“This is why I am still a Christian. You know, when life hasn’t panned out in the ways I hoped it would, and when the sadness or the darkness feels stronger than the light. The only thing that has been constant, the only place there has been lasting peace and hope that feels real  and that I can count on has been in Jesus. And I can’t shake that….otherwise, where is the hope?… even if I give up on everything else I can’t deny what is true.”

As Rachel shared the words above with me, her voice was broken with tears that she did not hide or try to stuff away. I asked her what she knows now about God as she walks through the middle of the disappointments.

That God is for us and He is deeply good.

There is no depth we go to that He can’t meet us in.

Even when it is so dark and so painful, there is beauty, and He gives us eyes to see it.

Without God, we can’t see and experience redemption.

There is life from death, light out of darkness. And this is what we need to hold on to.

After my conversation with Rachel, I sat for several days reflecting on disappointment. Ones in my own life. Ways I have dealt with it, both healthy and unhealthy. And trying to answer those questions I posed at the top for myself: Does God care when I am disappointed? Is He still good even when I feel crushed? And then this song came on in my playlist rotation as I was in the car driving, and with every line it seemed to answer me.

“You'll never quit on me

You'll always hold my heart

'Cause that's the kind of God You are.”

That’s the God that Rachel runs to in the middle. The God who carries me when I fall into despair. A God whose character never changes. A God who is the same yesterday, today, and forever. A God that if you place your hope in, you will not be disappointed. Because He is there. He will not quit on you. He steps into the darkness with us. And He is good…deeply good. And perhaps the disappointments we face are the beginnings of open doors and an invitation from God into deeper relationship with Him, deeper faith, and abundant life that we couldn’t see.

PS. The photo above, the one I used in the thumbnail, was chosen by Rachel. It was taken by accident by a motion sensor camera but felt significant to her. This is what she said about it: “It captures the metaphor of this tension that gardening is: taking part in the creative redemptive work Jesus invites us into, welcoming change and even death as it gives way to life, continuing to plant seed and nurture life, not knowing what the outcome will be, because the act of tending and trusting is more important than what we harvest.” Friend, keep planting the seeds and trust the growing to God. 

PPS. Rachel wrote the following liturgy because she was having difficulty finding one that captured what she has been experiencing. Perhaps there is someone out there that needs these words today too.

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A Couple’s Liturgy for Infertility

One: 

Father God,

We have hoped for so long

for the good gift of children,

and yet, we have been barren:

You have not answered our prayers or the cry of our hearts

as we had hoped.

You have given a stone when we asked for bread. 

Both:

O Giver of Hope, we place our hope in you;

We lay our infertility at the foot of the cross

to be buried there with sin and death.

May our obedience

be fertile soil for life to grow.

One:

Son of God,

It would be easier to tuck this dream away,

cease tracking days and signs, waiting for your return

(or at least a baby),

choose definite-pain over maybe-joy.

We feel the weight of time closing in,

made heavier by life’s other trials.

Would you blame us for moving on?

Both:

O Bringer of Life, we long for life in you;

We hold our dreams in open, trembling hands.

We let go control we never really had.

May we sow seeds of trust

for you to tend.

One:

Spirit of God,

we are weak with grief.

We keep soft hearts and predictably-

cyclically- our hearts keep breaking,

bleeding with bewildered pain,

arms aching, empty, longing to hold

a belly swollen with life, a child born of our love.

If you would never leave us, why do we feel so alone,

so left? 

Both:

O Comforting Counsellor, we will find consolation in you,

where death has stolen life before it began

and we mourn this invisible loss.

And if we do not find consolation yet,

still we will wait here-

to Whom else shall we go?

You have the words of eternal Life,

and we have believed and have come to know

that you are the Holy One of God.

Praise to you Lord Jesus Christ,

King of endless glory.