Disappointment: What Will You Do With the Pain?

Hearing God, choosing His presence, and exchanging our pain for His perspective

There are moments when disappointment is more than an inconvenience.

Sometimes it frightens us. Sometimes it challenges what we thought we knew. Sometimes circumstances unfold in a way that makes us wonder, God, where are You in this?

We have been discovering that one of the most important questions in disappointment isn't simply:

“How do I get out of this?”

It is:

“Where will I turn while I am in it?”

That question has become very personal for us.

When God Spoke Before We Knew What Was Coming

Several years ago, Sharon began sensing strongly that something wasn't right with my health.

We had been working with someone we trusted for years, but Sharon increasingly felt that the Holy Spirit was telling her that we needed another perspective. She didn't know why. She just had an unusual hesitation—an internal sense that we weren't supposed to continue doing what we had always done.

Eventually, we found someone who used different methods of evaluating health, and we made an appointment.

But before that appointment, something happened that deeply affected Sharon.

On Saturday evening, while sitting beside me, she experienced something she had encountered on a few previous occasions: she believed the Holy Spirit was alerting her to cancer.

Her immediate reaction was essentially, No. That can't be it.

Then it happened again.

Early Monday morning, before our appointment, she woke from sleep with the word “cancer” strongly impressed upon her mind.

Three times.

She still didn't know what we were going to discover. Neither of us did.

Later that morning, the practitioner raised serious concerns about what he was observing and told us that he believed we were seeing a precancerous process that needed to be addressed.

It was frightening.

But something else was happening at the same time.

God had prepared Sharon before we ever walked into the room.

That didn't make the news pleasant.

It didn't eliminate our emotions.

It didn't answer every question.

But it changed how we experienced the disappointment.

We weren't encountering something that had surprised God.

And somehow, in the middle of something we absolutely did not want, there was comfort in realizing:

He was already there.

A note about our story: This is our personal experience and spiritual interpretation of what happened, not medical advice or a recommendation to substitute spiritual impressions or alternative testing for appropriate medical evaluation.

Disappointment Gives Us a Choice

As we continued walking through our health journey, we began recognizing something.

Disappointment continually presents us with choices.

We can become consumed with fear.

We can become angry.

We can desperately try to control circumstances.

We can search everywhere for something that will make the uncomfortable feelings disappear.

Or we can bring the entire mess to God.

That doesn't mean pretending we're okay.

It means being willing to say:

“God, I don't like this. I'm afraid. I'm disappointed. I don't understand. But I'm bringing it to You.”

And that brought us to two people in Scripture who experienced enormous pressure and disappointment very differently.

Saul: When Fear Makes Us Take Control

In 1 Samuel 13, Saul was facing a deteriorating situation.

Samuel had told him to wait. But Samuel hadn't arrived when Saul expected him to, and Saul could see his people beginning to scatter.

The pressure was increasing.

So Saul acted.

Instead of continuing to wait, he offered the sacrifice himself.

Saul's response to uncertainty was essentially:

“I have to do something.”

That impulse is incredibly familiar.

When circumstances seem to be unraveling, waiting for God can feel irresponsible. Everything inside us wants to regain control.

Fix it.
Make something happen.
Stop the pain.

But sometimes our attempts to control disappointment take us farther away from the very One we need.

Later, when Saul was tormented, David's music brought him relief (1 Samuel 16).

But eventually Saul turned against David—the very person who had once brought him comfort.

Something was happening inside Saul that temporary relief couldn't heal.

Unresolved fear, insecurity and jealousy were producing something increasingly destructive.

David: “In My Distress, I Called Upon the Lord”

David experienced distress too.

A lot of it.

But listen to the direction David ran:

“In my distress I called upon the LORD, and cried unto my God.”
— Psalm 18:6

David didn't say he wasn't distressed.

He didn't pretend he wasn't afraid.

He brought his distress to God.

Psalm 34 gives us another beautiful picture:

“I sought the LORD, and he heard me, and delivered me from all my fears.”
— Psalm 34:4

David experienced fear.

But fear wasn't where the conversation ended.

Fear became an invitation to seek God.

And David certainly wasn't perfect.

Later in his life, David made devastating choices of his own. But when confronted with his sin, he eventually acknowledged it rather than defending his right to do whatever he wanted.

That is part of what distinguished David's journey.

He kept returning.

The Goal Isn't to Suppress the Emotion

This distinction matters.

Turning to God does not mean denying disappointment.

It doesn't mean:

“Christians shouldn't be afraid.”

Or:

“If I really trusted God, this wouldn't hurt.”

That's not what we're talking about.

We have experienced fear.

We've experienced anger.

We've experienced grief.

We've asked questions.

We've had moments when our emotions weren't pretty at all.

The invitation isn't to suppress those things.

The invitation is:

Bring them with you when you come to Jesus.

Beauty for ashes — bringing Jesus what we are carrying and allowing Him to show us what He wants to give us in return.

Beauty for Ashes

Toward the end of our podcast, Sharon shared one of the most personal examples of this.

Her mother has been facing terminal cancer, and Sharon has been walking through anticipatory grief—the strange pain of grieving someone you love while they are still with you.

One day she decided to bring that pain to Jesus.

In her imagination, she pictured herself handing her mother to Him.

And she saw Jesus receive her mother tenderly into His arms.

But Sharon sensed there was still more.

Several days later, she returned to that conversation with God.

This time, she pictured Jesus taking her mother toward heaven. As He did, her mother became a little girl—about six years old—with braided pigtails and a beautiful dress, running freely and joyfully.

That image was especially meaningful because Sharon knew how difficult her mother's childhood had been.

Later, when Sharon told her mother what she had pictured, her mother remembered having a photograph of herself at about that age—with braided pigtails and a dress.

For Sharon, that experience became a beautiful picture of entrusting someone she loves to Jesus.

It didn't change the reality she was facing.

It changed what she was carrying inside of it.

An Invitation to Bring Jesus Your Pain

This is something we practice ourselves, and perhaps it can help you begin a conversation with God as well.

Find somewhere quiet. Bring a journal if that helps you listen.

Then begin simply:

“Holy Spirit, is there something underneath the pain I'm feeling that You want to talk with me about?”

Don't try to manufacture an answer.

Tell Him what hurts.

Name the emotions honestly—even the ugly ones.

I'm angry.
I'm frightened.
I'm disappointed.
I feel abandoned.
I don't understand.

Then picture yourself placing those things into Jesus' hands.

You aren't pretending they never happened.

You're acknowledging:

“Jesus, I don't want to carry this without You.”

And then wait.

Ask:

“Jesus, what do You want to give me in exchange?”

Maybe a Scripture comes to mind.

Maybe you remember something about God's character.

Maybe you sense peace.

Maybe an image comes to mind that helps you understand what you're carrying.

Or perhaps nothing happens immediately.

That's okay too.

We aren't trying to manufacture an experience.

We're cultivating relationship.

Walk Through the Exchanging Pain Exercise

One of the tools that has been meaningful to us is the Exchanging Pain process from You Are Worthy Ministries.

It provides a simple framework for bringing our pain and emotions honestly before Jesus, releasing what we are carrying to Him, and listening for what He wants to give us in exchange.

We have made the process available here so you can walk through it during your own quiet time with the Lord:

Exchanging Pain Tool — You Are Worthy Ministries (PDF)

Exchanging Pain tool attributed to You Are Worthy Ministries.

This isn't about forcing an answer or manufacturing an experience. It's an invitation to slow down, acknowledge honestly what you're carrying, give it to Jesus, and make room to hear His heart and receive what He wants to give you.

Wait for Him

Lamentations says:

“The LORD is my portion… therefore will I hope in him. The LORD is good unto them that wait for him, to the soul that seeketh him.”
— Lamentations 3:24–25

And one of Sharon's favorite promises is Jeremiah 33:3:

“Call unto me, and I will answer thee, and shew thee great and mighty things, which thou knowest not.”
— Jeremiah 33:3

Maybe that's where we leave this conversation.

Disappointment will come.

Sometimes circumstances will change quickly. Sometimes the journey will take much longer than we hoped.

But disappointment gives us an invitation.

Where will I take this pain?

Saul shows us what can happen when fear increasingly drives us toward control.

David shows us another possibility:

“In my distress, I called upon the Lord.”

And perhaps that's where joy begins—not when every disappointing circumstance has finally disappeared, but when we discover that Jesus is with us right here in the middle of it.

That is what we're learning as we continue Journeying In Joy.

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A Question to Sit With

What disappointment are you carrying today that Jesus may be inviting you to place into His hands?

When Disappointment Becomes an Invitation

Even in the middle of the storm, His presence remains—and sometimes the darkness becomes an invitation to draw closer.

Sometimes God has a sense of timing that makes you smile.

We sat down to record the second episode of Journeying In Joy knowing that we wanted to talk about disappointment.

And then the power went out.

There we were, sitting by candlelight, talking about disappointment while experiencing a small disappointment of our own. We had gone 74 days without rain, so we were genuinely grateful for the storm—but suddenly we were recording a podcast in the dark.

It seemed strangely appropriate.

A Year We Never Expected

This past year has contained things we once looked at in other people's lives and thought, I don't know how I would ever handle that.

And then some of those things happened to us.

There have been broken relationships. Serious illness. Hospice. Hospitals. Fear. Grief. Unexpected expenses. Questions without easy answers.

At one point during our conversation, Sharon described it as perhaps the worst year of her life—and yet, at the same time, one of the years in which we have grown the most.

That's the tension we're beginning to understand.

Walking with Jesus doesn't mean pretending something isn't painful.

It doesn't mean calling something good when it isn't good.

And it doesn't mean that grief somehow demonstrates a lack of faith.

We can grieve.

We can be disappointed.

We can admit, This hurts.

But we don't have to grieve without hope.

The Question in the Middle of the Storm

As we walked through hospitals, family difficulties, and decisions we didn't know how to make, another question seemed to keep appearing:

Will you lean into Me? Will you trust Me?

There were circumstances we couldn't fix.

There were people we couldn't manage.

There were outcomes we couldn't control.

And perhaps one of the hardest lessons has been realizing that we were never supposed to control all of those things in the first place.

What we could do was remain connected to Jesus.

Jesus describes Himself as the vine and us as the branches. A branch doesn't produce life by trying harder. It receives life by remaining connected to the vine.

That's becoming much more than a theological idea for us.

It's becoming a way of living.

We Have Seen Him Prepare the Way

One of the remarkable things we've experienced is discovering that sometimes God was preparing us before we even knew what we needed preparation for.

There were financial provisions that came before we understood the expenses ahead.

There were quiet impressions that later made sense.

There were moments when the Holy Spirit seemed to prepare our hearts for the next difficult step.

And there were times when what He asked us to do wasn't comfortable.

One of those moments came during an early 80th birthday gathering for Sharon's mom.

Because of her illness, we knew this gathering carried a significance that ordinary birthday parties don't. Family had traveled from several states, and we wanted her to know how deeply she was loved.

Sharon felt the Holy Spirit nudging her to become vulnerable—to tell her mom what she meant to her, to honor her, and to play a song of blessing over her.

She didn't really want to do it.

It meant crying in front of everyone. It meant allowing people to see the grief she was carrying.

But she did it.

And something changed in the room.

Other family members began crying together. People opened their hearts. Conversations happened that hadn't happened before.

The vulnerability Sharon would have preferred to avoid became an opening through which love could be expressed.

We don't overcome disappointment by avoiding the pain. We walk through the pain with Jesus.

Not Numbing the Pain—Bringing It to Him

There are many ways we can respond when disappointment hurts.

We can become bitter.

We can become afraid.

We can become anxious.

We can lash out.

We can withdraw.

We can numb ourselves so we don't have to feel what we're feeling.

But there is another invitation:

Bring it to Jesus.

That doesn't mean ignoring our emotions. In fact, we've been learning almost the opposite.

Name the grief.

Acknowledge the disappointment.

Tell Jesus what hurts.

And then invite the Holy Spirit into that place.

We aren't presenting this as people who have figured it all out. We're still living it. We're still learning. We still get things wrong.

But we're discovering that Jesus meets us there.

Learning to Recognize His Voice

One of the practical things we shared in this episode is something that helped us when we first began learning to recognize God's voice.

Take a journal and find somewhere quiet.

Then ask a simple question:

“Holy Spirit, what do You want to talk about?”

And wait.

Perhaps a Scripture comes to mind.

Perhaps it's a picture.

Perhaps a song.

Perhaps a thought or impression.

Write it down.

Then compare what you've heard with Scripture and with the character of God. Does it reflect who He has revealed Himself to be?

Then continue the conversation.

Ask another question.

This was an important change in our understanding of prayer. Prayer began becoming not only talking to God, but making room to listen.

Relationships grow through conversation.

Our relationship with God does too.

Joy Is in the Journey

Maybe this is why the name Journeying In Joy continues to mean more to us.

The goal isn't to reach some spiritual place where difficult things no longer hurt.

And God isn't standing at the finish line saying, You should be joyful by now.

He's with us in the journey.

As Sharon said during our conversation:

“Joy is in the midst of it.”

That's what we're discovering.

This has been an extraordinarily difficult season.

And somehow, in the middle of it, we're also recognizing His voice more clearly, experiencing His provision more personally, and learning to depend upon Him more deeply.

Maybe disappointment isn't always something we have to hurry past.

Maybe sometimes it becomes an invitation.

An invitation to stop trying to figure everything out ourselves.

An invitation to bring Jesus the places that hurt.

An invitation to listen.

An invitation to trust.

An invitation to know Him more deeply than we did before.

And perhaps that is part of what it means to journey in joy.

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A Question for the Journey

Think about a disappointment you're carrying right now.

Instead of beginning with, “Lord, how do I fix this?”, try sitting quietly with Him and asking:

“Holy Spirit, what do You want to show me in the middle of this?”

Then wait.

Listen.

And write down what comes.

— Mark & Sharon
Journeying In Joy