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.
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
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