How to Grieve Disappointment & Preserve Trust
By Mary Grace Dostalik
None of us know what the year ahead will bring––this is always true, but, after experiencing all the twists and turns of 2020, our lack of control is all the more evident. A lot of this year has been spent playing the waiting game. We’ve waited for things to get better, for something to happen, for things to improve.
During all of this waiting, it’s hard not to feel grief for all the things that we planned and hoped for. It’s hard not to mourn all the things we were going to accomplish. I was supposed to spend the year in Ireland, traveling around Europe. When I returned to the U.S. eight months early, it was hard to let go of my expectations and dreams that weren’t meant to be.
But I know that the year I had planned was not meant to happen anyway. Though the year God had planned for me was harder than I would have wanted, it also pushed me and forced me to grow in ways I never imagined. Abandoning all our plans and our very lives to God is not easy but it is necessary if we are to heal and move forward. We can grieve our disappointments while simultaneously trusting that God is in control.
Fr. Jean C. J. D’Elbee’s book I Believe in Love, examines the spirituality of St. Therese of Lisieux. He writes, “We must have confidence, not in spite of our miseries but because of them, since it is misery that attracts mercy.” Our miseries and our sufferings force us to face our own dependence. Many times, these miseries bring us to our knees and help us face the fact that we are not in control. We are weak. We are dependent on the Lord.
Yet, even when recognizing this dependence, it can be hard to truly cultivate healing and move on from disappointment––it is so much easier to wallow. I remember the very beginning of quarantine, I had just arrived home from Ireland and I had nothing, absolutely nothing, to do and nowhere to go. I should have spent my time praying but, in those moments, when there is so much time, it seems harder than ever to turn to Jesus.
We have to be confident in His work. If we do not come to the Lord in confidence, what choice is there but despair? Through recognizing our own weakness and dependence on Him, we can begin to heal from our own weaknesses and our own disappointment. Despite whatever wretchedness we feel, God can heal us. To say any less is to doubt in His overflowing mercy.
2 Corinthians 12:9 states, “My grace is sufficient for you, for power is made perfect in weakness.” We are called to embrace our weaknesses in order to grow in dependence. If we truly believe in the truths of our faith, what choice have we but to entrust everything to Him?
The enemy wants us to be held up by our weaknesses. He wants us to despair and lose all hope that our lives will ever get better. He wants us to believe that our weak and sinful natures can never be glorified in Christ.
“For me to become greater is impossible; I must put up with myself just as I am with all my imperfections,” St. Therese recounts in her autobiography, Story of a Soul. “I feel that if (though this would be impossible) You were to find a soul more weak and little than mine, You would be pleased to shower upon it even greater favors if it abandoned itself to You with complete confidence in Your infinite mercy.” Therese accepts her weakness––in fact, she rejoices in it––for it forces her to depend all the more on Christ. She understands that greatness is only found through Jesus.
We can only heal from our disappointment when we accept it. It is only after we accept these failures that we can look forward. When we remember that it is Christ who has been at our side through each step, the choice becomes clear: we can either surrender our anxieties and disappointment to Him or we can choose to carry it on our own shoulders.
Christ asks us for this sincere gift of self. As Fr. D’Elbee recounts, “Jesus needs nothing but your humility and your confidence to work marvels of purification and sanctification in you.” The more humbly we come to the Lord, the more we realize that despite our unworthiness, He loves us. In spite of all our imperfections and lost opportunities, He loves us.
Our true identity is not found in the things we thought we were going to experience and accomplish this past year. Our identity is found in Christ alone. He looks at what we are, not what we can do. Again, Fr. D’Elbee goes on to explain this so clearly: “He looks much more at what we are than at what we do; and we are in His eyes, what we sincerely want to be for Him.”
“I want nothing but what He wants. It is what He does that I love,” Therese said in her autobiography. She acknowledges that it took her a long time to desire this type of abandonment, but she experienced the truest form of freedom when she did; then she was free to pursue the desires of her savior.
Abandonment, practically speaking, means that we are able to surrender to the will of God in all things. We are called to do our best, but remember that it is through Christ that all good is truly done. We must have confidence in His works, for He knows us so much better. He endured pain and agony on the cross to give us life. How can we doubt in His everlasting love and desires for us?
No matter how weak or lost we feel, He loves us. His love is not dependent on our own plans or accomplishments. Grieve your disappointments and turn them over to the Lord trusting in His love and His plan. For it is only when we abandon ourselves to Him that we are truly free.
