Real Hope: Dealing With Disappointment and FailureSample

Sorrow Isn’t All Bad

Realizing you’ve messed up can be one of the most painful experiences in life. There’s sadness at what might have been lost through your actions, and maybe even shame that you didn’t do better.

The sorrow that comes from that – the deep feeling of distress – can go one of two ways: regretfulness or hope.

Left to our own devices, regret is often where we land. We’re saddened by the irreplaceable moment we got wrong, the crossroad we misjudged or the relationship we had to let go.

In the hands of God, though, we can find hope.

Those moments of grief become moments of self-awareness. We’re sorrowful because we suddenly see how we did less than our best in the way we treated someone, or that we ignored a prompt from God and took a misstep.

When we take that sorrow to Him, aware of how His mercies are new every morning and that He keeps no record of wrong, we don’t need to feel the regret of worldly sorrow. We can have hope inspired by the goodness of God and His unmatchable ability to make all things work together for good.

Written by LAURA BENNETT