When We’re Hurt
One of the stressful areas of spiritual life is knowing how to deal with major and minor disappointments. We want to handle disappointments correctly. However, pain, hurt, and disillusionment tend to cause fall-out in our emotions. We may react in one of several ways.
I had three stressful disappointments in the last three years that involve people I care about. All of the disappointments were difficult to deal with emotionally because I was wounded. I cried. I was hurt. I felt unappreciated and thought my opinions were devalued. All three were people wounds. Barriers came up that caused strain in these relationships.
When We’re a Christian
Because I care about my spiritual life and my walk with God, I can’t allow myself to remain immersed in the pain or allow myself to submerge very long in angry bitterness and resentment. I don’t want to have bad feelings towards others, yet I have a hard time when something seems unjust or unwarranted. Unfair treatment is very difficult to get over, but for God.
A disappointed person will probably do one of the following three: They allow bitterness to thrive, or they ignore it and pretend it didn’t happen, or they deal with it in a pro-active way. We all have choices: Some healthy, some not so much. From what I’ve observed, most people ignore the pain and anger. They just go on as if they weren’t just hit by a Mack truck.
When It’s a Spiritual Battle
For me, I have to work it through until I’m on the other side of it. When the disappointment causes me to experience deep pain to where I am hurting, angry, feeling rejected and disrespected, and exasperated by not being valued appropriately, I know it is going to take time, maybe months, for me to fully recover. For some the process goes faster since personalities differ.
It can involve talking it through with someone you trust, like a friend, family member, pastor, or therapist. You learn it’s a process of addressing the issue, learning more about what happened, letting go of the reins–you stop trying to make it turn out right, maybe confronting the issue and person, maybe forgiving, and always rebuilding and restoring your wounded self. Most importantly, you seek God to guide you through it.
When You Want to Do the Right Thing
How to handle disappointments with a spiritual mindset is determined by what you value on the spiritual side of life. In your natural state you can build up or tear down yourself and others. I value peace, my human relationships, healthy community, and my relationship with God. That’s why I choose to deal with it and not ignore it. (It can be hard work, too.)
After the reacting settles down, I’m not content to remain in a miserable space or at odds with others. I won’t be satisfied until I’m in a good space, no matter how long it takes me get there, to where I return to peace with myself, others, and God. Sometimes I discover that I unwittingly contributed to the problem, which is good to know, or I took something too personally, which is also good to know.
Here’s a process that’s helpful:
- Go to God about it.
- Acknowledge why it caused you pain.
- Seek to give it to God while you let the anger and frustration go.
- Ask yourself what you can learn through this.
- Thank God for being with you and helping you through it.
That doesn’t mean you are a doormat, that you have no opinions, that you never speak up when you’ve been wronged or something’s hurtful. What it does mean is that you intention to be better, not bitter, that you will address it, and not ignore it, and that you will learn something from it. Usually disappointments have spiritual components that cause you to put down roots in your faith.
The goal is to bring it to God first. Let Him help you walk through it–while you keep your eye of faith held fast on your Savior.
