Disappointments are sometimes God’s way of leading us home.

About this time last year my world was completely flipped upside down and although I wish I could say this was the moment I started to walk with Christ, I would be lying. However, it’s the exact moment that changed the trajectory of my life, calling me to pick up my cross. Again I found myself at a loss over what I thought my life would be, utterly broken from so desperately trying to control my surroundings. My lips quivering and breath shaky as I drove home after an unexpected breakup, I refused to believe this was happening again. For weeks I kept to myself and tried my best to deny the hurt that was threatening to swallow me whole. Pretending that I was fine and still in control of my life was causing me to implode on the inside while still smiling to the world. Ironically, sometimes to get your life back, you have to face the death of what you thought your life was going to look like. I struggle with the distance between what I thought I would be and where I would be and what actually is quite a bit. I’m still learning to be still in that sense. Disappointment roars with earth-shattering thunder and you don’t know when these disappointments are coming your way, they just show up. It was in this disappointment and wreckage, that God saved me. Stay with me here as I unpack something that I am still working to understand some days - something that satan has fought to keep us from knowing. Disappointment holds the potential for so much good, but we’ll only see it that way if we trust it in the hands of God. It doesn’t feel like a gift at the time, it’s sharp and almost cruel, but disappointment is sometimes God’s way of leading us home. God doesn’t want us to fear pain, He knew how badly that season was going to hurt for me. But in all of that pain, He taught me things that I wouldn’t be able to learn in any other season. Acknowledging this pain and everything happening around me lead to me opening my heart to Christ. I began to lean into Him and bring my disappointment with me. I was able to find freedom from my crippling desire to be in control, to be in a relationship, and my efforts towards perfection. In the quiet and unexpressed disappointments in our life, Satan is at work handcrafting one of the most dangerous weapons. If the enemy can isolate us, he can destroy us, and his favorite entry way into our lives is through those disappointments. If we don’t open up about our pain, we are allowing Satan to rewrite God’s beautiful love story, leaving us suspicious of our creator and all He has done for us. God wants to give each one of his children life in fullness - a journey of joy and wholeness. My worldly love story ended, but my eternal love story really just began. We will never appreciate our True Love if lesser loves don’t disappoint us. God gives us encouragement in Revelation 21. He will stop the continuum of death, decay, and utter disappointment. He makes everything new. For many reasons I would tell you that breakup was one of the best things to happen to me - not because he was a bad guy or because I’m bitter - but because it lead me home.