Disappointment

© Dr. Gary D. Lemmons, April 23, 2006

There is nothing as cutting and hurtful as being disappointed by one who is a friend. 

I am not talking about reacting to the little incidental irritants of day to day life that we are all guilty of promulgating one against another.  Rather, I have reference to those events that arise in our lives wherein someone that we have trusted, someone that we have loved as a brother or sister, someone with whom we have felt almost a family tie fails, grossly, to live up to the expectations of honesty and commitment that we would have believed them to possess in their character.

It is easy to be critical and to condemn someone who has betrayed us.  After all, we are angry, we are disappointed, and we are hurt.  Our insides are turned over, and we feel sick.  We can allowed our injury to cause us to want to strike back, to find all of the flaws of the one who has disappointed us, and to rail against them with bitter arrows of verbal expressions or malevolent thoughts. This is particularly true when the injury has been done, not only to us, but to others who we hold dear.

It is at those times that we discover of what our own metal is composed.  It is at those times, when we are the victims of the most grievous insults, that we are called upon to demonstrate the most holy act of forgiveness.  It is by that act that we cleanse our own characters of the stain of self-pity and come into a state capable of helping the one who has wronged us.

This is not to say that we excuse the behavior of those who may have injured us or others.  Indeed, there may be consequences that we have to enact against them.  But, we proceed on the path of necessity, not on the path of revenge.  Whatever our responses are, they are motivated by doing what is right, not what will get us even.