Dealing With Disappointment

I was in the grocery store with my children last week, browsing the colorful fall produce and figuring out which kind of apples to buy, feeling sort of bewildered by all the different kinds and wondering if the taste was really all that different. I settled on Sweeties, mainly because they looked like Galas, which I usually buy, but cost the same as plain old Red Delicious, which we recently decided have the worst tasting peel of all apples. Yes I know, we are spoiled Americans, and we also live in Washington State, so we are also apparently apple snobs. After I finished bagging our carefully chosen fruit, my older daughter asked, "So, what kind did we get?" I told her we got the Sweeties, thinking the cute name would definitely appeal to a seven-year-old girl. She wanted different apples and commenced with the mother of all whining fits right there in the middle of the produce section, embarrassing the heck out of me and leaving me wondering whose child this was in front of me who suddenly sounded more like Veruca Salt from Charlie and the Chocolate Factory than the reasonable, cheerful, and usually even-tempered child I had in recent years come to expect. I quickly paid for our groceries and got out of Dodge, and when we got home some well-earned consequences were handed out, but I was left feeling incredibly frustrated at the fact that I was still fighting this same battle of responding to disappointment with my children. I thought we had crossed this bridge at four, and again at five, and again and again and again, and then it hit me that we never really get over feeling like shrieking when we perceive that something unfair is being done to us. When we are in preschool, someone takes our toy and won't give it back. When we are in grade school someone cheats at foursquare and beats us. In junior high, someone cheats off our test and gets a better grade then we do. In high school a friend ends up dating the boy we liked first. And then adulthood arrives, and all those problems disappear, because we are grownups now, and we surely don't have to deal with such childish behavior anymore, right? Wrong. Someone else gets the job you worked so hard to get, that you really thought you deserved. Or you are told that you are not right for a position that you know you would be great at! Or you try to have a baby for years while everyone else around you seems to have no trouble at all popping them out. Or you have to move away so that your husband can continue to have his dream job, but you have to leave yours behind. I didn't have to make any of these things up; this is my real life. And I'm sure you have a list of your own that looks pretty similar. What have you had to come to terms with in your life? What have you had nearly in your grasp, but it just seemed it wasn't meant to be? And for the clincher: have you yet said "Thank you!" for not getting what you wanted? If you can put some distance between yourself and your injustices, you might notice that because you didn't get what you wanted, something even greater happened instead, something you could not have imagined when you thought you knew what you wanted. Because I didn't get the boy I thought I wanted, I noticed another boy, one who I fell in love with at 15 years old and have now been married to for eleven years and together with for almost 20. We couldn't have a baby when we first got married, but eventually we had two little girls when the time was right. Our move opened up a new way of life for us, and strengthened our marriage and our faith. Life did not go the way we planned at any step of the way, but we learned (and are still learning) a priceless lesson. What we want, what we think we should have, might not be what we get. We might even have to watch, even smile and applaud, as others get what we think should have been ours. But it is okay, and we can let it go easier the older we get, as we have seen how to be thankful for what we didn't get, and how to wait for the better thing that always comes later. It can still hurt, but I don't have to stew in the hurt if I can remember to get up, brush off, and then expectantly look forward to what else will come along. I now have another job interview sometime in the next two weeks that I'm excited about. My husband is working on some new career goals after being told he can't proceed with something he's always wanted to do. And my daughter told me today that Sweeties are her new favorite apple, and she's sorry she said she didn't want them in the store. "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