Disappointing Yourself

How To Reconcile Your Wishes & Your Reality

I write a Christmas letter every year. Actually, it’s a poem. I started doing it in 1994 and, although I balk every year at the amount of work it is, the Hubs loves that I do it and so the tradition continues.

Some years the hardest thing about the Christmas poem is that I look back over the year and feel that, in spite of my best efforts, I have not progressed in areas that I thought I would. There have been ventures over the years that flopped or fizzled or even ended in tragedy.

Those things are hard for me. I don’t think it is just a thing that galls my Enneagram 1 personality, or that my pride is dented (I actually welcome dents to my pride. In fact, I look forward to its death!). I think all of us have those points of pain that come home to roost in our very own yards.

As we’ve spent the last couple of blogs talking about needing to forgive the gap between our ideals and our reality (the gaps in our relationships and the gaps in having our needs met), this is the toughest gap to forgive: the gaps I see in myself. How often I have been less than what I had hoped, less than what others expected, less than I had envisioned I would be. How often my visions and dreams have ended in dark nights of the soul and renewed surrenders to whatever perplexing outcomes the Lord intends.

Honestly, I can think of no better gift to give you than the gift of freeing yourself and those around you from the baggage of disappointment, regret and relational pain. I’m tackling the biggest gap to get over: the gap between what I wanted for or from myself and what my reality is. #Disappointment #Regret #RelationshipGoals

Often the gaps in me are ones that could not have been avoided. I think of the gap between where I thought God was taking me and where He is actually going or I think of the gap I’ve battled this year between the hopes I had on January first and the chronic illness that hit January 4th that I’m still battling and that may be plaguing me for quite some time. I can do nothing about these gaps. When my best efforts, disciplined habits, spiritual warfare and biblical wisdom changes nothing, I can only stand in submitted faith and learn trust at a deeper level.

I still find I need to forgive those unavoidable gaps though. My heart had such high hopes. My reality has shaken me. So I will choose to forgive, to lay aside the disappointment, to not allow bitterness and a victim mentality to reign in my heart.

Other gaps revolve around areas in which I could have done better. The Hubs is one of the most gracious humans I have ever met. And although I am beyond grateful, he often says something that drives me nutty: “You did the best you could.” Now, that is a nice, gracious thing to say, but I see all too clearly the gap between what I did and what I could have done. There is always more that could be done. Granted, I could destroy myself, my relationships and my priorities doing all the things I “could have done,” but I see them, nonetheless.

That’s why I’m so grateful that the Hubs reflects God’s grace to me. I need it. I tend to be quite graceless toward myself. Others? – oh, I have much more grace for them, but me? – I cringe at the yawning gap of failings. (Again, thank you, Enneagram 1 for that constant critic in my head….)

I know the pain of the gaps you see in yourself, the haunting regrets, the should’ves and could’ves that the enemy uses to try to keep you looking backward. But let’s stop letting him have a say in where we focus. Let’s trust the Lord, even with our gaps.

I’m not saying we should tolerate sin in ourselves, but that we need to be willing to let go of our failings the way God does and move forward without trying to use our past to beat ourselves into better behavior. It’s time to find freedom in forgiving ourselves, in unlocking ourselves from the pains of the past and in allowing the Lord to determine the trajectory of our lives.

There is nothing like the freeing sensation of forgiving yourself, my Friend. Speak over yourself with grace – that grace you would give another person – and tell yourself that you forgive yourself, that you are on the road of progress and that God’s grace will work powerfully as you surrender yourself to His Spirit working in you.

As you celebrate Christmas, it is my prayer that you give yourself this gift and that, as you look forward into the New Year, you do so with hope untethered to past disappointments.

“But he said to me, ‘My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.’ Therefore I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may rest upon me. For the sake of Christ, then, I am content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and calamities. For when I am weak, then I am strong.” 2 Corinthians 12:9-10

For more on how to deal with “Unmet Needs,” click HERE!