lifelong learner

NY2020: Happy to Dis-appoint

~ Georgia Coats ~ 2 Comments

Dear Disappointment,

I’ve spent way too much time thinking about you.  But don’t flatter yourself.  We’re not becoming friends.  In fact, I’ve acknowledged you, unwelcomed, inside the kingdom walls of my heart.  I just needed a moment to reset, refocus, breathe. I guess I also needed to spend way too much time in the shower on a Wednesday morning.  Rest my thoughts.

Now I’m ready to take some action.

Here’s what I know about you:  You work from within to kick down little appointments.  You damper dares and infect healthy fear.  You friend frustration and fiend innocence about it all.  Your M.O—If you can frustrate small fulfillments of goals and longings, you can make room for your older, stronger relative—discouragement.  But discouragement is harder to go unnoticed, like you.

Your goal is to impede me from moving forward with mine.

You see, my 3 words for 2020 are…

small…

…..daring…

………… worthy.

It’s a tremendous trio.  It’s diamond strength I’m learning to weild.

Just in the first few weeks of 2020, I have seen what you do to daring. I’m on to you.  And small—that’s my word, and you can’t claim it.  Thanks to MLK Jr., I’m committed to figuring out how to do small in great ways.  Wouldn’t you just love to dis-appoint all that, in your small ways?

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But then there’s worthy—I have intrinsic value and this is my heart space, not yours.  I have authority to appoint.  All you can do is kick down edifications and expectations that others have built up.  You exist to make us fret the small stuff; you are right there when the cold, full glass of milk spills, and you lie in wait to see what we’ll do about it.

Well, I’m here to dis-appoint you.  Because I can.

In the little kingdom of my heart, I appoint hope to reign, which means despair is not welcome in my kingdom.  I appoint encouragement as ministry of defense, and offense.  Discouragement will meet defeat… outside my kingdom walls.

Thanks to you, I’m taking back my appointment power.

Thanks to you, I’m reassessing what I long for, and what I hope is fulfilled in my schedule of daily life.

Thanks to you, I’m reminded that even the greatest of greats in history faced you.  But the ones I aspire to be like looked past their unfilled dreams to fulfill their greater destiny.

You and I are both small.  But I have the power to appoint, and you don’t.

You don’t belong here.  I can acknowledge when you show up, but I don’t have to let you stay.  I don’t have to let you decide who gets to make my heart home.

I don’t have to let your disses make me feel smaller or less worthy, or even less daring.  You may have damper power, but I have a fire that goes before me.

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NY2020: Dear Disappointment…What’s the Point of You?

~ Georgia Coats ~ 2 Comments

Dear Disappointment,

You’re not my favorite.  You are a slow drain on my motivation.  You make my brain fuzzy and indecisive.  You send me veering off track ever so slightly. You bring fear to the party, uninvited. I feel more adept at interacting with some of your crotchety and domineering relatives, like discouragement.  And over the years I have learned to set clear boundaries with despair.  I see nothing redeeming about spending quality time with you.

There’s no hope for you.

I purposely keep my expectations low so I can minimize how often we hang out.  I’m awesome at anticipating what is needed and adapting to people and circumstances.  I can shake your little solo missions fairly quickly.  But you… you just hover in the middle of my weekdays.  You look for ways to accumulate and gang up. You are the frown faces in calendar next to all the appointments you dissed—my cancelled meeting, my rejection notification on an application, my feverish and coughing kids, my mediocre night’s sleep.

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Recently, I invited daring into my 2020 mindset. And I’m realizing that you come in the fine print.  You accompany daring wherever she goes.  You are the damper on more daring attempts.  You are the reason my risk-taking is so intentional and well-thought out.  And yet, I turn around and there you are, still. I see you. You keep one foot in the door so frustration can just slip right in.

Go away!

At least I can learn from failure.  That’s how we grow.  I understand how healthy fear makes me more courageous.  Grief, sadness, shame, guilt, rejection, loneliness…. I’ve had intimate relationships with all of these negative emotions and am better for them.  But you?  All you do is take, take, take.

What do you have to give?

Chronic disappointment becomes discouragement—the wearing down over time.  Chronic discouragement untreated becomes despair—the total loss of hope.  But I’m the queen of chronic hope.  That was my 2019 mindset.  You can’t touch my hope.

King Solomon the Wise of the ancient world said that,  “Hope deferred makes the heart sick, but a longing fulfilled is a tree of life.”

Or can you?  Are you the one who makes a heart sick?  Are you the one who stunts tree-of-life growth?  Are you the slow deferring of hope that flies under the radar?  Are you the one who causes my decision fatigue, for every dis-appointed thing I have to reconfigure?

What is the point of you?

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