Where Do I Go? Devotions From Time of Graceনমুনা

 Where do I go with my disappointments? 

There is great resilience in human nature. People know how to take a lickin’ and keep on tickin’. We get knocked down and we get up again. Every athletic coach spends a lot of time with the attitude of his or her players, pushing and pushing so that they won’t ever quit, no matter how daunting the odds.

But we do have limits to how much we can take. We all hit some experiences that become dream crushers. After your fourth exploitative and selfish boyfriend, you start to doubt that there are any decent men anywhere. You’re 40 years old and realize that you have never felt true approval from your perfectionist mother. Your spouse stops doing the wonderful things that made you take the risk and get married in the first place, and your marriage becomes a dull endurance march.

Where do you go when you’re in an emotional hole like that? Why, to your Father, who loves you unconditionally and always has a listening ear: “Why, my soul, are you downcast?  Why so disturbed within me? Put your hope in God, for I will yet praise him, my Savior and my God” (Psalm 42:5). You are not going to experience heaven until you get to heaven, but the God who lives there gives you little tastes and insights that your best life is still to come. He thinks you’re beautiful and wonderful and can’t wait to enjoy you in his Paradise.

In the meantime, give him all your disappointments and dreams and then watch for his answer.