The last few years of my life haven’t been what I expected them to be. From an abrupt and somewhat devastating break up, to facing a new reality in a world divided by a virus, nothing about my life is as I thought it would be. I had a lot of dreams for my life, but none of them included an extended period of singleness, moving back home, and having nothing to post on instagram that could stand up to all the engagements, baby announcements, and promotions my friends were posting.

This is the part of the story where I could throw a pity party. It’s the part where I reflected on everything I’d done, and how I wanted to do big and beautiful things for Jesus, but somehow managed to do very small things instead.

If I’m honest, I did throw a pity party. I didn’t want to face the sadness and disappointment of things turning out different than I dreamed them. I wanted Jesus to wave His hand and make the sadness go away, somehow turn everything around while I sat in my little world of sadness, but that’s not what happened.

Instead, He invited me to a season of discipleship, a season of looking Him in the eyes and being honest with Him about how I felt. He invited me to know Him this way:

“He was despised and rejected—a man of sorrows, acquainted with deepest grief. We turned our backs on him and looked the other way. He was despised, and we did not care. Yet it was our weaknesses he carried; it was our sorrows that weighed him down.” - Isaiah 53:3-4a


He was a man of sorrows — acquainted with deepest grief. I thought this only applied to the big things: world hunger, the homeless crisis, hurricanes, and other natural disasters, but there’s noting here that says He doesn’t know my grief too. There is nothing anywhere in the Bible that says that my small, 21st century disappointments are so insignificant He wants nothing to do with them. There is no record of Him telling anyone to “calm down” and “get over it” or “it’s not that big of a deal.”

And that’s when it hit me, the key to overcoming my disappointment wasn’t to shove it down or be angry with myself for feeling it, it was to acknowledge it with Jesus and see that all this time He was mourning with me. He made room for me to cry and even promised that my tears wouldn’t go to waste with Him:

“You keep track of all my sorrows. You have collected all my tears in your bottle. You have recorded each one in your book. My enemies will retreat when I call to you for help. This I know: God is on my side! I praise God for what he has promised; yes, I praise the Lord for what he has promised.” - Psalm 56:9-10

And as I give Him my tears and the most honest, vulnerable parts of my heart, I can start to see His promises again. I can start to see hope again —not because I decided to forget my pain and remember that God is good, but because I was met by His goodness and mercy when I couldn’t see anything but disappointment. He’s not in a hurry for me to feel better or to get back up and keep doing things for Him, He’s actually genuinely interested in friendship with me, and friends give friends a shoulder to cry on.

So in this season, if you’re trying to learn to hope and dream again, I charge you to get to know the Man of Sorrows. Jesus, the man who is unafraid to weep with His friends. The One who stores your tears in bottle and refuses to let them go to waste. Have a real, honest conversation with Him about all the things you wished had happened, all the ways things didn’t go the way you thought they would. Watch Him meet you with tenderness and love, let Him turn your mourning into gladness by giving yourself the space to mourn first. Learn to hope again by acknowledging your disappointment, and watch as He wipes every tear from your eyes.