Our bright and shiny lives are always silhouetted with sadness.
There may be seasons where our sorrows are muffled by grace,
but disappointment remains the white noise of our existence.

Disappointment: to be deprived of a position, displaced, let down . . . dis-appointed.

This Christmas season may not be “the most wonderful time of the year” for you. You are estranged from a family member. It is your first (or fiftieth) Christmas without a loved one. You are battling an illness. Your daughter is suffering with an addiction. You are living in a new area and feel completely discombobulated. Your job is not working out. Finances are tight. As a couple, you have been struggling with infertility and are enduring yet another Christmas with no children around the tree.

Perhaps nothing of traumatic nature has occurred, but the process of aging has left you on unfamiliar soil. The children have grown up and have lives of their own. The days when you were the center of their attention and they clamored for your affection are long gone, distant memories. Now you are on the sidelines feeling increasingly superfluous—less useful, less needed. The best you might get over the holidays is a generic Christmas card with a family photo.

I remember the evening like yesterday. I was sitting in my lazy boy in the living room of my home.

Earlier in the day, Lori and I with our four sons and only daughter-in-law at the time, had been at my father-in-law’s house where we have gathered for Christmas Eve every year for the last thirty plus years. Other family members were present. We celebrated with lots of food, opening gifts, playing games, and enjoying good conversations. It had been another wonderful day with the people I love most dearly.

Now, we were home, and everyone was in bed. Except me. I was alone in the living room sitting on my lazy boy. Uptight. Fidgety. Restless. Anxious.

Disappointed. No logical explanation.

Disappointment has many forms. Some disappointments can be one big blow that knocks the wind out of us. One day we get up and go through our normal morning routines and by sundown we have been hit by a Mack truck that came out of nowhere. You are diagnosed with cancer. Your spouse was in a fatal accident. Your home was broken into while you were away. You lost control of your temper and are charged with a serious crime, sitting in a jail cell. Other disappointments sneak up upon us and tend to be long in the making and not tied to any single incident. These are the disappointments that are an aggregate of the many little things that did not happen. You did not take your health or financial future seriously enough. You did not attend properly to your marriage or the spiritual climate of your home when the children were young. You got busy. Benign neglect. Lost sight of what really matters. Now you are paying for it physically, financially, vocationally, relationally. The clock cannot be turned back. Now you live with the consequences of those indecisions.

Disappointment can also be something self-imposed—something we carelessly bring into our lives—by the simple touch of our finger to the screen of our phone or iPad. Nothing like viewing all the happy, exciting posts of friends and family to get you in the doldrums thinking about how terrible your life is next to your neighbors and brothers, how you have been passed by. Everyone else’s lives seem to be in full swing—Christmas parties and social gatherings, travel, the oral delights of an exquisitely prepared Christmas ham, mom’s scalloped potatoes and green bean casserole, homemade pecan pie, . . . and your week will be a mixture of going to Denny’s, working, housecleaning, and watching Netflix. A few hours on social media is just the right recipe to make anyone feel cheated out of Christmas.

If anyone knew disappointment, it was Mary the mother of Jesus. Imagine being a woman engaged to be married and getting news from an angel that you are pregnant with someone else’s child—God’s—and then explaining to your fiancé (along with your parents or his) that no impropriety has occurred! In fact, when Mary does break the news to Joseph, he is ready to pull the plug on their relationship until an angel persuades him otherwise. Fast forward. Near the end of her term, an official decree is made by the Roman government requiring the young couple to make an onerous journey on unpaved roads through treacherous terrain and mountains to Joseph’s hometown of Bethlehem. Any woman who has been pregnant will tell you of the fatigue, sleeping difficulties, bladder challenges, shortness of breath, varicose veins, etc. that come in the final trimester. A ninety-mile hike would be next to impossible for most women at this stage. Then, when Mary and Joseph finally reach their destination, all rooms at every motel are taken, and the only place available is a little barn where an inn keeper keeps his few cows and sheep. None of this in the natural makes for a good start in any marriage. None of this was what Mary had envisioned for the next chapter of her life.

Now add the ominous words of Simeon who prophesied at Jesus’ baby dedication in Jerusalem: “This child is destined to cause the falling and rising of many in Israel, and to be a sign that will be spoken against. . . And a sword will pierce your own soul too” (Lk. 2:34-35). This is far from the standard congratulations card for a new parent. Not long after that, Joseph is warned in a dream by an angel to leave town post haste as the baby Jesus’ life is in danger because of a madman who is in office by the name of Herod. So, the couple flees to Egypt in the middle of the night where they become refugees.

It goes on and on. Disruption, uncertainty, insecurity, danger, social backlash, loneliness, inconvenience, confusion, . . . No one remotely in tune with reality could not have been disappointed. We must not forget that Mary was human. She was not some superhero. Life is not supposed to go the way it did for Mary. Like every other young lady, she had dreams of what life together with Joseph would look like—where they would live, setting up their home, adventures they might take, the family that they would become, . . . and all of that is shattered. Yes, she was a woman of faith, but I cannot imagine her not struggling with disappointment along with many other unpleasant emotions.

So, what are we to make of all this? How does Mary’s story and her experience of the first Christmas speak to our own disappointments? How did she deal with the cards placed in her hand? Luke 1:38 gives us the answer in her response to the angel: “I am the Lord’s servant. May it be to me as you have said.” Mary let go of her expectations. She surrendered her neatly configured paradigms of the future and how things should play out.

This letting go is not to be equated with passivity or giving up. Rather, it is releasing our “rights,” desires, and hopes into the loving and sovereign hands of God in order to receive something new and better. In our relinquishing, we give up trying to decide what is ultimately good or bad and entrust ourselves fully to God. For Mary, the Christmas she experienced was not what she anticipated, but it turned out to be the remarkable, exceedingly wonderful, unexpected place where she met the Messiah.

This may be a very difficult season for you. Your heart is hurting, and you do not know how much more you can take. But may I remind you, it is often in the mess that we meet the Messiah . . . if we are open. Seldom do we encounter glories of Christ when things are going as planned, when all is Hallmark well. St. Paul discovered the greatest riches in his times of greatest pain. To paraphrase, “I delight in disappointments because in those times I find Christ to be totally sufficient in ways I could not have known except for the let down I faced” (2 Corinthians 12:9-10).

Do not let disappointments deny you the opportunity to experience God’s love in ways you could not know except for loss, loneliness, weakness, and heartache. God’s gifts of grace are most often wrapped in uncommon and upsetting ways. The cross is telling evidence that God is found in the most Godforsaken places. And remember, too, that Christmas is more than an event or season; it is a journey that invites us to open our lives to God in greater ways. Whatever your current status or particular set of circumstances, your heart can become the little village, the stable, the manger that welcomes Jesus anew even now.

But we must train our eyes to see the light that shines in the darkness. Think of all those who missed the moment that first Christmas. Only a handful of the most unlikely people besides Mary and Joseph experienced the glory of that first Christmas. So, be attentive to the signs, the hints, the doors that may lead you into deeper fellowship with Christ and accordingly, your most supreme joy. His kingdom has come. Emmanuel is here! This world is buzzing with life, drenched with Grace. Christ’s Spirit is moving, working, restoring, reviving.

It is okay to mourn in your disappointments, but even as you weep, keep watch.

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“I am still confident of this: I will see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living.
Wait for the Lord; be strong and take heart and wait for the Lord.”
(Psalm 27:13-14)