Excerpt from:
Life Shouldn't Look Like This
Dealing With Disappointment in the Light of Faith
When I Grow Up...
(and other disappointments.)
"I never expected things to turn out like this."
Paulette is a 44 year old woman with three children. Her husband, Charles, recently left her for a twenty-five year old intern who was working in his law practice. She was devastated.
"I don't even know where to start. I don't know who to be more angry at. Him for fooling around on me? Me, for being so stupid not to see it coming? Or God for letting this all happen."
Martin, 37, is a production control supervisor for the local nail manufacturing plant. He makes a fair-enough living, but he experiences his life as empty and unsatisfying.
"Every morning I wake up and wonder if this is what God really put me here to do. I have to fight to be on time for work, and I can't wait to leave at the end of the day. I know I'm no different than a lot of people, and I should probably just be grateful for what I have, but I can't stop wondering if this is really all there is. When I look back, I never really had a plan for my life. I just sorta went where life took me, y'know? Except now, I feel like my work is sucking me dry and I don't have anything left to give my wife and kids. I'm tired and depressed a lot of the time. I'd love to make a change, but I'm not sure what to do or where I'd go."
Michael has the opposite problem. Since he was a young boy, he knew he was going to be a doctor like his dad.
"It was as if it was pre-ordained. I was going to go to med school and enter my dad's internal medicine practice. I killed myself to get the grades I needed and graduated near the top of my class. I make an enviable living, I have just about anything I want, including professional respect, but after all this time, I am struck by the fact that I despise what I do. I wanted to be a doctor because that was what my family wanted for me. I suppose they could have done worse, but I realize now I never had a passion for it. I could make myself do it, but I never really wanted to. Now, ten years out of medical school, I wish I'd never done it. There are so many other things I would have liked to do better, but I feel like I'm trapped by my success and the expectations everyone puts on me."
All Rebecca ever wanted was to get married and have a large family. A deeply religious woman, she felt that motherhood was the most important work she could do and wanted it more than anything.
Unfortunately, for years, marriage evaded her. When she was in her early twenties, she had been engaged to a man whom she had dated for five years, but he broke the engagement two months before their wedding. She tried to get on with her life, but she never seemed to find someone she really clicked with.
She finally met Joseph when she was thirty-five and they married within a year. She felt that God was finally granting her heart's deepest wish, but when they tried to have the family she always wanted, nothing happened.
"The doctors have some big medical name for it, but it basically means that I won't be able to get pregnant, or sustain a pregnancy if I do. I just don't know what to think. Why would God make me want something so bad for so long only to crush my dream in the end? I feel so betrayed. Whenever I have experienced disappointments in the past, I would take them to God. Right now, I'm afraid of him. He did this to me. How can I trust a God who would allow me to suffer like this?"
A while ago, there was a national television commercial for an employment agency that showed, in warm, sepia tones, images of children looking like little Rockwellian caricatures as sentimental music played in the background. Against this "isn't life grand" backdrop, the children stepped into focus one by one and proudly announced, "When I grow up. I want to be a 'yes' man."
"When I grow up, I want to be downsized."
"When I grow up, I want to be stuck in middle-management."
And so on. Poignantly, cheekily, and cynically pointing out something of which many of us are all too well aware: Life does not often turn out to be what we expect it will be.
If we were to continue the theme, we could just as easily add many similar statements.
"When I grow up, I want to be a single parent."
"When I grow up, I want to be alone."
"When I grow up, I want to struggle with illness and disease."
And a million other sad permutations of this theme, many of which are lived out every day by millions of people all around the globe. Maybe even you.
The truth is, when we are children we do not dream of downsizing, divorce, or disease. We dream of success, of marrying that prince or princess, building a castle together, and filling it with children. We dream of fame, or wealth, or perhaps simply, happiness. But sometimes our dreams don't come true. The prince turns out to be an unrepentant frog after all, the castle is more like a ruin, and no matter how many rainbows we chase, the wealth and happiness continues to hide at the end of the next rainbow. Yet, somehow, through it all, as Christians we are encouraged to hold on to our hope, our faith, and to the love of God which-people are telling us anyway-is continuing to call out to us to the promise of something better.
Though we have begun this journey on something of a bittersweet note-the promise of youth frustrated by the pressure of years--I want to state right now that this is a book about hope, not the false hope fostered by wishful thinking, but the hard-won hope of people who have struggled, survived and lived to know the blessings and peace that God had in store for them for their perseverance. Each one of the people I described at the beginning of this chapter were people I have had the privilege of working with and walking alongside of on their road to healing and peace. Every day in my work counseling Christians all over the world, I hear similar stories of people who struggle in faith, who are asking hard questions like, "Why did God do this to me?" "What am I supposed to do now?" and "Where is my life going?" The good news is that there are answers to these questions, not general, cookie-cutter answers, but individualized, personal, meaningful, and discernable answers. I too have struggled with similar questions in my life as I am sure most human beings have. I am grateful that God has allowed me to use the techniques and attitudes I will present in this book to find fortitude in my times of struggle and to help others keep up the fight as well. More importantly, I am grateful that God has shown me how to use these techniques and attitudes to find, and help others discover, the resurrection that comes after facing their crosses head on.
In your own life, you may not have experienced circumstances as painful as the ones I began this chapter with. Of course, some of you may have endured much worse. Regardless of the crosses you have had to carry, or the expectations that remain unfulfilled, I want to assure you that there is hope for your future, there is purpose to your life, and that there is a resurrection after this cross. Romans 8:28 tells us, "For those who love God, and are called according to his plan, everything works out for the good." It is my intention, in this book, to help you confront the disappointments of your life head on, to face the challenges with courage, and to learn to respond in such a way that God will be able to lead you step-by-step out of your darkness and into the light of his peace and truth.