Disappointment

I started drafting this post on the day that GCSE results for 16-year-old students were published in England, Wales and Northern Ireland.

Following the disruption caused by the Covid pandemic, which saw teaching moved online and otherwise disrupted, and the adjustment made to grades for the past two years to take account of that, there was much discussion on how this year’s students would fare.

Fortunately, once the results were published, it seems that many of the concerns about grades proved to be untrue but there will have been some students who didn’t get the grades they expected and so may have been disappointed as they move onto the next stage of their life, whether in education or outside it.

Disappointment is a strange emotion which, I think, is sometimes heightened because we have our own (often very fixed) ideas on what the outcome of a situation will be.

Sometimes disappointment comes through events, when we try to repeat something which has worked well, or which we’ve enjoyed before, expecting the result to be identical.

When I was a child, my family holidayed in Guernsey in the Channel Islands in three consecutive years. We had breakfast and an evening meal at the guest house where we stayed and bought bread, cheese and fruit from the market for a picnic lunch on our favourite beach.

During the second holiday, to vary things, we decided to visit the very basic looking café above the beach at lunchtime and buy and eat some sandwiches there. It was very busy and while waiting to be served, we saw plates piled with such delicious looking food coming from the kitchen that we decided to have a full meal instead of sandwiches.

Although that was over half a century ago, I can remember so clearly what we ate between us: two huge plates of fish and chips and two wonderfully fresh crab salads followed by raspberries with thick, yellow Channel Islands cream and, for my brother, a banana split which had not only a banana and ice cream but also the same sized portion of raspberries and cream as the rest of us were enjoying. He certainly made the best choice!

We talked about that lunch for months afterwards and on our holiday the following year we couldn’t wait to go back to that cafe. We could almost taste the banana splits which, that year, we were all going to order!

Imagine our disappointment when we pushed the door open to find a very dusty, uncared for and half empty café which had obviously changed hands. Deciding not to waste precious holiday funds on a full meal, we made do with some very dry and unappetising sandwiches. Probably the most disappointing meal I’ve ever had. Doing the same thing twice and expecting exactly the same result so often leads to disappointment.

Sometimes we’re disappointed not by situations but by people. This may be in small ways: they might forget to send a card for an important birthday or anniversary; they leave it until the last minute to let us know that they can’t come for the meal we’ve spent all day cooking or, they arrive later than expected when the meal is past its best.

Or, sometimes, in larger ways: a relationship in which we’ve invested so much emotional energy may end abruptly; the people living in that house we thought would be our ‘forever’ home have accepted someone else’s offer; our potential new boss has given that dream job to another candidate or our favourite sports team has lost an important fixture…. I know you’ll have our own list.

Perhaps there are things you had hoped would be happening at this point in your life or in the immediate future and you’ve recently begun to feel as though they won’t; or at least not in the way that you thought or, perhaps, not in the place where you thought they would? You may be having to let go of dreams and ambitions through curtailment or adjustment or, even, abandoning them completely like a balloon which has collapsed.

How disappointing that feels, with its potential effects on our self-worth and, perhaps, even causing depression. There are times too, when we feel that we’ve failed one another, ourselves and, most importantly, God and that is the ultimate disappointment.

I sometimes think about how Jesus, who was fully human as well as fully God during his earthly ministry, experienced disappointment. Was he disappointed by the way so many people rejected his message? Was he disappointed that his disciples asked repeatedly for clarification? How disappointed was he, (as a human), that his disciples fled and, Peter rejected him when he was captured, tried and crucified even though that had to happen for our salvation? Was he simply disappointed that he had to be away from his family for much of the time without the many convenient ways of keeping in touch which we have today?

It seems that Jesus forgave those who had ‘disappointed’ him and used the experience to teach them of God’s love for them.

As the summer holiday period comes to an end and the hours of daylight are becoming shorter, I’m struggling to find a way through my current disappointments. Yet, I’m trying to use this as a time of learning and growing; resting and waiting to see what’s going to happen next for me.

I’m trusting in God, so whatever and wherever that may be, I know that I won’t be disappointed.