Disappointment

I imagine we all have suffered this sometimes-crippling emotion. We anticipate something or long for it, or dream of it, put our time and energy into investing to make it happen, and for whatever reasons, it just doesn't happen. Johnny was supposed to call Sylvia back and he didn't do so. The boss told me he was going to give me a raise, and that never eventuated. Millicent promised her neighbor Maurice she would watch his plants and water and care for them while he was away on holiday, and she forgot. Several of the plants died. As a result, Sylvia, and I and Maurice all experienced disappointment. 

Psychology Today said in 2012 after love and regret it's the 3rd most commonly experienced emotion. According to the old adage, “disappointment is expectation divided by reality.” I visited the PT website to find some significant advice and some well-worn chronology to the emotion and consequences of disappointment. And I was not disappointed.  The trail is wide and the content well worth the read. It's endless, as well, which could be wearying for the casual wanderer into such a journey. Start here. Especially read this one by blogger Melanie Greenberg. 

For instance, Jim Taylor (teaches at USF, Ph.D.) writes "Disappointment is a normal, though difficult, part of growing up. Your children will inevitably experience disappointment in school, sports, the arts, and in their social lives. How your children learn to respond to disappointment will determine its impact on their future achievement and happiness." 

I really liked that comment. Watching my own kids fail at times, or remembering when I failed as a child, and now as an adult, when I fail again, what I do with that failure and the commensurate emotion of disappointment will impact what happens next and certainly how I feel about what happens next.

Both Beverly Flaxington and DW Rainey (Rainey, D. W., Larsen, J., & Yost, J. H. (2009). Disappointment theory and disappointment among baseball fans. Journal of Sport Behavior, 32(3), ) comment on longevity of disappoinments helping people to handle them. They both use sports imagery. And indicate that a losing team, which always loses, doesn't disappoint long-time fans. Why? The fans are used to losing. Obviously then their expectations are lowered, and when they lose the Big Game, a shrug of the shoulders is common rather than tearing one's hair out. 

What prompted my thinking about this topic today? Perhaps it's the loss of the Kansas University Jayhawks to the West Virginia Mountaineers. After all WVU had started the conference season at 0 and 5, meaning their fans were getting used to losing, having lost all five of their matches against Big 12 opponents. And perhaps because Kansas is a perennial winner of the conference championships, and I'm an alumnus of this hallowed basketball icon. 

Losses happen; no team ever finshes the season without a loss. But my expectations were so high on today's game, with a Hall of Fame coach in Bill Self, and some pretty good players on the court, well, it just seemed a good time to win another road game. But I felt disappointed when the Jayhawks lost. 

What else prompted my thinking about this topic today? I'm worried about the Kansas City Chiefs dropping teh ball like the Jayhawks did. It is their first time in the Conference championship game (vs the New England Patriots) in deccades. Expectations are high; worries join them. Will the Chiefs perform well in the cold and snow? Will the offense catch those passes from phenom Patrick Mahomes? Will the defnese show up like they did last week against the Indianapolis Colts? Time and ESPN here in Sydney will tell. 

What else? I suppose my own personal commitments to serve people and particularly to love my wife and children are often met with disappointments. I let them down. I plan to take out the rubbish, or to bring in the laundry, or help put away the dishes, but sometimes I forget, or the phone rings and I drop the ball.

The words of the Prayer Book (Anglican) remind me, "we have gone our own way, not loving you as we ought, nor loving our neighbors as ourselves. We have sinned against you in thought, word, and deed and in what we have failed to do." Weekly to pray this might most make anyone feel disappointed, but if you know yourself and your own sinful tendency, this regular confession of sin is actually a disappointment-preventative. I know myself. I know I will not perform perfectly. I know I will disappoint others. I know God knows who I am and He appreciates my confessing my sins, and my failures and I can again hear clear words of pardon and hope in what comes next.

Perhaps the studies of Flaxington and Rainey should help me understand myself. Not to excuse me, nor to cause me to stop trying to be better, but to forgive my failures that much quicker. And to forgive the Jayhawks or the Kansas City Royals or whoever. 

PT's advice is 6 strategies when you are disappointed:

"1. Revise expectations: Try a bit of “retroactive pessimism.” Social psychologists have identified what they call a “hindsight bias” in which you can limit their disappointment by revising the high expectations you once had for winning. Tell yourself you didn’t really expect to win, and as time goes by, the new memory will replace the painful, original memory.

2. Increase your disappointment tolerance. There’s no reason that people low in disappointment tolerance have to remain that way forever. Don’t let disappointment breed pessimism because if you do, you’re likely to set yourself up for even more disappointment in the future.

3. Don’t let disappointment skew economic decisions. When feeling disappointed, a person is more likely to sell at a loss. If your favorite sports team lost the championship, don’t rush to dump your treasure chest full of memorabilia onto eBay.

4. Assess a person’s role in personal disappointments. People can control many of the outcomes in their personal lives. If someone’s expectations in love and work chronically fail to materialize, make an honest appraisal of what needs to be changed.

5. Control identification with a losing cause. The sports fans who feel the most let down are the ones who identify most strongly with their teams. There’s nothing wrong with being loyal, but if it impairs a person’s daily happiness, he or she needs to find other ways to boost their spirits.

6. Use humor to boost the disappointment emotion. Loyal sports fans who retain their loyalty despite years of disappointing outcomes almost seem to relish their identification with the underdog. Perhaps by joining the ranks of fellow sufferers, a person can find solace in self-deprecating humor. Laughter is truly one of the best coping strategies for dealing with disappointments, and offsets the consequences of faulty pessimism-based decisions."

Consider this from the Gospel of John, "But Jesus, on His part, was not entrusting Himself to them, for He knew all men, and because He did not need anyone to testify concerning man, for He Himself knew what was in man." (2.24-25)

I suppose this was a preventative Yeshua used in relation to humanity. After all, in just a couple more years He would be dobbed in to the governmental leaders and crucified for crimes He didn't commit. Was He disappointed? Nope; He knew both His mission and humanity's natural responses.

My hope for you in 2019, set goals, sure. Set standards of behavior and love and morality and activities. And set up a way to forgive yourself if you don't reach or maintain those standards. Hurdles on a cinder track make for a great addition to a race, and falling on those hurdles slows a runner down, sometimes to the point of loss. And losses can be disappointing, .So, put into your life hands that lift you up after you hit the hurdles. Yeshua is the most obvious choice. His forgiveness is eternal and life-changing. And He won't disappoint!

Romans 5:5. "hope does not disappoint, because the love of God has been poured out within our hearts through the Holy Spirit who was given to us."

Who says this is a miracle?

The year: 1980. 8,500 people screaming in the arena. According to Wikipedia, "The "Miracle on Ice" refers to a medal-round game during the men's ice hockey tournament at the 1980 Winter Olympics in Lake Placid, New York, played between the hosting United States, and the defending gold medalists, the Soviet Union. Here is the last 60 seconds video to watch.  The announcer asked, "Do you believe in miracles?"

Mario Chalmers is an Alaskan basketball player whose career at Kansas University was stellar and launched his continued career in the NBA. In the 2008 championship game, KU played Memphis in San Antonio. With 10 seconds left, Memphis had the lead and Derrick Rose was shooting 2 free throws. Easy, no problem. Except Rose as the entire Memphis Tigers team had done all evening, missed another free throw. KU had 10 seconds to get a 3-point play to tie. They had shot only 2 3-pointers all game. But Mario sank his with 2 seconds left and sent the game into overtime. Here's the video of the last 10 seconds of regulation.  The next day, the papers called Chalmers' shot a miracle.  (I disagreed, but that was another blog)

The word 'miracle' is often misused, even abused. Every breath is a miracle, some say. If Susie will notice Larry at the year 9 dance, it will be a miracle. They sell miracle cures for hair loss and any number of other first world troubles on late-night television. 

Ultra-Orthodox Jewish rabbi Shmary Brownstein of Chabad writes about miracles quoting Maimonides and Rabbi Tzvi Ashkenazi (1660-1718) among others. Brownstein explains that what we refer to as nature is actually miraculous and “unnatural.” It is only because “natural” events happen all the time that we take them for granted.

But how is nature and above nature or unnatural all the same? Philosophically that doesn't work.

He says, "In the words of the Talmud, “The one to whom the miracle is happening, does not recognize the miracle.”... Extraordinary miracles wake us up to the fact that all of life, down to the minute details, is one big miracle...Maimonides, in his Guide for the Perplexed, writes that all supernatural events were “programmed” into the world at the time of creation...In our daily prayers, we thank G‑d “for Your miracles that are done for us daily.”"

If it's supernatural, then it's not natural. If it's extraordinary, then it cannot be ordinary. Right?

Think about it. When men on ice skates slap a puck into a net 4 times, and their opponents do the same only 3 times, the 4-times men win the game. That's not a miracle. When Chalmers hit the 3-point shot with 2 seconds left, it wasn't a miracle; it was a great shot. 

But miracles do happen. 

Kris Samons of Probe Ministries quotes C.S. Lewis well in this answer:
"It’s very interesting that a common word used for miracle in the New Testament can also be translated “sign.” A miracle is a sign that God uses to point to Himself; the same way we follow signs to find a museum or an airport.

An interesting question may arise. Does something have to break a natural law for it to be a miracle? C.S. Lewis defines a “miracle” in his work by the same name as an interference with nature by a supernatural power. Obviously, to interfere with natural law may not necessarily mean to break the natural law. In fact, nature and “supernature” become interlocked after a miracle occurs and nature carries on according to the change wrought by that event. A science example: the law of inertia (Newton’s first law of motion) states that an object will remain in rest until an external force is applied. Nature can only move from event to event through supernatural intervention.

Deists believe that it was only at creation that the supernatural and the natural related. But we Christian theists believe that God has intervened in nature by its inception, sustained it by His preserving power, and will redeem it through the final act of intervention. The creation and incarnation of Christ are the perfect examples of supernatural inertia (another way of referring to a miracle), not to mention their conclusion as well, in His second coming. God is still in the business of working miracles. And we wait eagerly for that greatest miracle of them all–the redemption of all creation."

Sign-- the Hebrew word is "OAT." Like in Isaiah 7:14. "Therefore the Lord Himself will give you a sign: Behold, a virgin will be with child and bear a son, and she will call His name Immanuel." Virgins don't have babies. So when a virgin walks around the village insisting she has not had relations with a man, and brings a child into the world, that would be miraculous. And Samons' words are true again as this sign God used to point people to Himself. 

That's the story of Christmas. Mary, Joseph, the baby, Bethlehem. It's all there and it's all a sign. Have you seen the sign? Do you know which direction it's pointing you?

The birth of Messiah was like this: "When His mother Mary had been betrothed to Joseph, before they came together she was found to be with child by the Holy Spirit. and Joseph her husband, being a righteous man and not wanting to disgrace her, planned to send her away secretly. but when he had considered this, behold, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream, saying, “Joseph, son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary as your wife; for the Child who has been conceived in her is of the Holy Spirit. She will bear a Son; and you shall call His name Jesus, for He will save His people from their sins.”

Now all this took place to fulfill what was spoken by the Lord through the prophet (Isaiah): “Behold, the virgin shall be with child and shall bear a Son, and they shall call His name Immanuel,” which translated means, “God with us.” 

And Joseph awoke from his sleep and did as the angel of the Lord commanded him, and took Mary as his wife, but kept her a virgin until she gave birth to a Son; and he called His name Jesus."(as recorded by Matthew in chapter 1:18-25)

That's a sign.
Where is it pointing?
Where is it pointing you?

Merry Christmas.