When The Narrative Shatters
Before I got married this time around, I went to counseling by myself to deal with some grief and loss issues. In one session, after crying and complaining, the counselor looked at me and said,"You really don't deal with disappointment well."
My sarcastic mind shouted, "YOU are F-ing BRILLIANT!"
But my mouth said, "No, I don't."
There was a joke that my step-grandfather used to love, and it goes like this:
A man falls from the top of a very high building and lands splat on the pavement below.
Quickly a crowd of passersby gather around the man to check on his condition.
In an instant, the man jumps up, brushes himself off and looks around with a bit of cunfusion at the people who had gathered.
One of the passersby yelled out to him, "Hey man, what happened?"
The man replied, "I don't know. I just got here myself."
You might not find that funny, but grandpa would laugh hysterically whenever he would tell it.
I doubt many of us take disappointment well. Seldom do we jump right up, brush ourselves off, and forget about the trauma that just transpired. If you're like me, you rather enjoy playing the martyr and wallowing in self-pitty for a while. You want others to feel sorry for you and your pathetic situation. You want people to know how you have endured the slings and arrows. Yes, Hamlet, conscience does make cowards of us all.
My blogger buddy, sster, recently noted the shattered narrative and how painful that could be when all you had authored of the future for yourself and your family turns to rubble, sometimes in the blink of an eye. This week, she wrote about packing up the physical manifestations of that shattered narrative.
A young woman who is in my small group at church recently faced disappointment with her interview to be commissioned after getting her MA and preparing to be ordained. She wrote the following:
My team leader on the B.O.M. called me around 6:00 pm today. The good news: I was given the "green light" by the committees on Call and Personal Growth and Development. The bad news: I was "continued" by the committees on Theology and Practice of Ministry. Bottom line: I don't get commissioned this year. Next year I can re-apply for probationary membership, although I'll only have to submit the papers and do the interviews for Theology and Practice. I should receive about five pages in feedback, which will help me in preparing for next year...
I'm reminding myself that this isn't the end of the world. Several people are "continued" every year. And part of this is my fault...I obviously didn't put my best foot forward in the applicable papers/interviews, or I would have been approved. Jeremiah 29:11 continues to be my mantra.
She's a fantastic young woman who makes sure in the end to remind herself what parts of her situation she is responsible for, and what she isn't. And - she's keeping the faith. She knows the long road ahead.
What I find particularly uplifting is this:
Here is a woman who has dedicated her life to preaching and teaching the Word of God. Yet, in her move of ultimate faithfulness, she faces disappointment. It would be easy for her to throw her arms up in the air and say, "See, I knew I wasn't supposed to do this. God has let me down. The Methodist church stinks! I give up. I knew I should have gotten my MBA instead. At least then I could have made some real money instead of suffering like this."
Nope, she trusts. She's already planning for next year - the very next day after she got the disappointing news.
I so relate because I detest “closed doors” – I want to see what’s behind them (and the next one, and the next one). It is so hard when our chosen narrative that we’ve written up for our own lives doesn’t quite match up to the one God has written up for us – after all, our narratives are fabulous – WE came up with them.
The “why” of these disappointing turns in our lives may or may not be revealed in the future. We might end up somewhere fabulous at some point in the future and know without a doubt that IF we had gotten the narrative we had drawn up for ourselves, we would not be where we are now (then). Or, we may never know.
Another fellow blogger wrote about infertility and noted that her husband had said he realized that infertility was the greatest gift God could ever have given him – because of what it brought him in the end (their two adopted boys). I’m not there yet and don’t know many people who are. I hope one day I am at complete peace with infertility and the roller coaster ride of fostering-to-adopt.
But I'm giving myself permission to not deal with disappointment well. If I did, I don't think I'd give a rat's ass about much of anything. "I care, therefore, I am disappointed."
posted by No Longer In Crisis @ 3/09/2006 09:48:00 AM
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