Disappointment
Have you every been disappointed? I mean REALLY disappointed. The kind of disappointment that you can taste. A bitter, ugly taste? Perhaps your disappointment stems from an event you felt was deserved and was now taken away…beyond your control. We have been detoured because of a closed road – making us late for a show or maybe even missing the show. We have been booted off the beach and evacuated from a coastal town due to a hurricane. These were disappointments that ended…okay because we made accommodations. We overcame. In 1990 I was invited by my brother, serving in the US NAVY, to board and travel with the crew of an aircraft carrier. It was a special cruise offered to family as the carrier returned from a six-month deployment in the Mediterranean Sea. I was to board in Bermuda and ride four days back into port in Virginia. As you can imagine – I was EXCITED. The carrier was within a day of leaving the Med to come home when the army of Iraq went into Kuwait. Notwithstanding the general uneasiness of the whole unrest in the Middle East – yes, I was worried about my once in a lifetime cruise. Back in 1990 we got information via a landline call to an answering machine. I checked that number about a thousand times a day. The machine’s reply was “the cruise was off”. One day, very near when I would have been leaving, I got two letters (yes, real letters in the US Mail, not emails) from my brother. Being the good OCD guy that I am…my family says I’m CDO – which is alphabetical like it should be – I lined the letters up in chronological order according to postmark date. I opened the first. Along with some general “hey, how’s it going?” it said…”GET TO BERMUDA HOWEVER YOU CAN. THE CRUISE IS ON” If you think you have a read on my level of elation, you’d be wrong. On a scale from 1-10 I was hovering above 100. I opened the second letter which I was sure contained more details about the trip. It said, “The cruise has been cancelled.” If you think you can imagine my level of disappointment, you’d be wrong again. On that same scale I was in the range of 492. The bitter taste in my mouth would last for a long time. My once in a lifetime adventure had be taken from me, and it was out of my control to change. I was too focused on ME to look at a bigger picture. In the end my brother and crew all returned safely to port.
Do you suppose Mary was excited to be engaged? Excited to embark a new life with a new family of her own? Do you think she was disappointed to be given the news that her cruise had been cancelled? That she was to go on a different trip. Whatever disappointment she felt – she overcame and said, “Here I am…”
Do you think Joseph was excited to be engaged? Do think he was disappointed to discover his bride-to-be was going to have a baby? He overcame. Saw the bigger picture and persevered.
Do you think God is excited to see a strong, healthy Christian living in Huntington? One with means and energy to help others. Do you think he is disappointed when he sees ME complaining about…well, everything and nothing? As I continue to see the bigger and more important picture, I hope he perseveres and has patience with me. I shall overcome.
“We must accept finite disappointment, but never lose infinite hope” -Martin Luther King, Jr.
Steve Matthews
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