I Was Thinking... Compared To

Recently, I was ready to check another item off my bucket list.  I had been invited to accompany three other men on a fishing trip to Canada.  For years I had seen pictures of men hauling in large walleyes and northerns from the Canadian lakes.  It had always been a dream to hook into one of these lunkers. 
My rods were newly equipped with heavier line, and I had bought even more tackle to add to the abundance I already had.  For once I would have a chance to use some of the lures in my tackle box that had seldom been in the water.
The plans were all set to leave on Saturday but on Wednesday I came down with Covid. Two days later my wife tested positive.  All the planning and anticipation came to a sudden halt and a deep disappointment set in. Why now? Why me?
When we encounter disappointment, we often think we are the only one who ever gets dumped on. Just look at other people’s lives. On Facebook we see everyone else is having a great day. They show pictures from vacations, family gatherings, or tranquil sunsets over a lake.
Everybody’s life is good but mine. Seldom do they take a picture of their son striking out to lose a ballgame, a dessert that totally flopped, or their garden overgrown with weeds. We are careful not to share our failures and disappointments. Yet they are also a part of our life and growth.
Most parents would like to see their children succeed in whatever they do. They hope they will do well in school, be popular with friends, and be musically and athletically talented. That is a tall order for any child to fulfill. 
In all my years of teaching, very few students were able to fit the bill. But there was one girl that seemed to have it all. She was academically superior, musically talented, and was a three-sport athlete. You would think her parents would be elated.
Yet at a parent-teacher conference they expressed concern she was only getting an A- in my class. Although she received an athletic scholarship for college, she quit playing after only one year. In college competition she had encountered a certain degree of failure. She hadn’t won everything like she had in high school and never learned the value of disappointment.
When I grew up, disappointment was a part of my life because there was plenty of things I wasn’t good at. If we played games, someone won and someone lost, not everyone went home with a trophy. Living on a farm, you learned to live with disappointments. Despite your best efforts, crops sometimes failed, machinery broke down, and animals died. We learned to live with disappointments. Real life is like that, filled with both successes and failures.  
At the recent Byron Hall of Fame induction, a football team from 1990 was recognized. They made it to the semifinals before losing their last game to the eventual state champs. The season provided many successes before the final defeat. It was a great disappointment at the time, but now, years later, most agree it was a wonderful experience. They got to play their last game in the Metro Dome where the Gophers and Vikings played.
After my fishing disappointment, I received a daily devotional that hit home. It said, most of our lives don’t turn out exactly like we thought they would. Twists and turns, our own choices, and unexpected events all shape our lives in ways we never anticipated. Some things are for the good and others are not. Sometimes we don’t even realize if they are good or bad until much later in life.
But it is alright to be sad, disappointed and even grieve our situation. But we shouldn’t just dry our tears, we should give ourselves a good face washing to clean ourselves up so we can move on to what will be happening in our lives now and in the future. It reminded us that God was there, working in our lives in both the good and the bad times. 
Did You Ever Wonder? - Do fish get thirsty?