Video Transcript: Pastoral Issues: Disappointment

In this particular lecture, what we're going to try to take a look at is  disappointment for the senior citizen. And disappointment comes in many forms. And often, when we're looking from the outside as a senior minister, we don't  really understand that this disappointment is, is there, it probably is down in the  person's heart. And I'm not going to talk about it unless they have a very secure  relationship with the person to whom they talk, because disappointment at times can be so difficult to try to express to try to understand how do we deal with it?  And what is what does God really want of our lives, we're going to take a look at  some of that in the next half an hour. So disappointment is defined as a feeling  of dissatisfaction that results when your expectations are not realized. And I  have come to realize that disappointment is a common feeling for seniors. Over  the years as I have been a pastor, as I have interacted with so many people who are senior citizens. I realized that actually disappointment is quite common. For  example, Dorothy, Dorothy was, was one of my parishioners, and you would say that, you know, she was one of the more jovial kind of people she was a  wonderful woman to hang out with. And then, and then at one point, she told me about her son, her son that she had been praying for, for 25 years he had grown up, had done the, you know, hey, she and her husband had raised him well, he  had done well in school, except when he got to be about 17, then he started  being rebellious, and to, to reject everything that she and her husband stood for.  And now it's 25 years later, and her son still was a person who, who made sure  that she knew he didn't want anything to do with who or what she was. She  prayed for him every day, for 25 years. And it still wasn't happening. He wasn't  coming back, he wasn't turning around from his life of sin. To disappointed  there's Raymond and his son and Raymond came to see me one time, his son  had called him up was in in jail and in a city, some distance away is like 1500  2000 miles I mean it he hadn't spoken with his son two years and all sudden he  gets this phone call. And his son is asking for money for bail. And before he  would send it he he came to see me and he said, pastor, when do I give up?  When do I give up? And the pain and the sorrow that was there. The  disappointment was rather strong. It arises as disappointment arises in many  ways. We'll be looking at a few of those ways during the course of this  presentation so as the the illustration here as how do you feel about being Oh,  well, yeah, how do I feel about being old? And many people when you're talking  with them privately, when you find out what's going on inside, they would say I'm kind of disappointed. There was so much more that I was hoping to have from  life but now I'm disappointed. And as they look at this illustration too they'd say,  What in the world is that rainbow doing there? Because as one gets older, the  disappointment looks far more like threatening rain clouds and depressing rain  thunderstorm type of clouds, or a tornado like clouds. The rainbow No, that's not what Getting old is about and It's been said before, growing old is not for the  faint of heart. Ministry to seniors involves being able to listen to some bitter 

reflections on life. There's always going to be something that an individual looks  back on. And says, Well, if only I had done this, if only I had chosen that, If only,  if only if only or I could have, I could have I could have I would have if I had  known, if I had known, I would have done this, if I had known I would do that if  only if only if only. And that's where the source of bitterness arises. Now,  granted, granted, not all of a person's conversation is going to be like that. But  literally, no one goes through life without being disappointed and sometimes  deeply disappointed at something that's what life is like in a broken world. We  live in a broken world, there is no question about it. And when we live in a  broken world, everything is not always sweet and happy and good. Sometimes  it's deeply, deeply disappointing. And as one gets older, as one becomes a  senior citizen as one realizes that the days of our lives are threescore years and 10. Like I'm just about 69, I'm just about touching that when one looks back,  there's going to be some bitter reflections on life. And as a senior minister, we  need to be able to listen to some of those reflections and help people to work  through them. For example, as the illustration looks like it here's the big building  with all of this, this skeletal structure that you can see. But what lies behind that,  you know, it's a choose this as a way to illustrate that, that people can work on a skeleton plan but what actually becomes of it? What actually it can we live within the skeleton plan. Far too many of us have had a skeleton plan only to have it  just end with the plan they're dashed hopes and dreams. But we had hoped for  what we had planned for what we what we had dreamed about things being and those empty hopes those empty dreams end in the feeling we call  disappointment. It wasn't what we wanted. That wasn't what we expected. You'll  hear people describing how, as they were going through life, they wanted to  have a child the child never came. And they're so disappointed. They'll describe  that as they were going through life they wanted to have just a small business of their own. And it never happened it was disappointing so all these dashed hopes and dreams of what things could have been. And it's just not there. And  disappointment is very real in the lives of these senior citizens. When we're  young, we have this fire of youth and we're striving to to get on our lie on our  way in life to make our plans to pursue our plan. We want to go and and for  example, I know I know man who wanted to be in construction and it just wasn't  working for him and finally when he was was at his lowest and as he was  wondering what to do and he was so disappointed with how life had been  treating him. He went to his brother who was also in construction who was doing rather well. And he said to his brother How about that, you you, if you buy me a  truck, I'll make my living driving, driving this truck. And if you could help me in  that way, and he had to humble himself a long ways to be able to say that to his  brother, his brother was very happy to help him out that way. And it ended up  over the next 15 years from the time when he was 50. till he's about 65, the  brother drove truck, and actually he built a real trucking business around that 

start that his brother had given him. But his his life was such that he had all of  this disappointment about what, what could have been, why couldn't he have  done this? himself? Keeps questioning? Where did I go wrong? When did I go  wrong? And the dashed dreams seems like they're just broken, and our life is  less because those dreams. Those dreams are just gone. Over the years, I've  observed some examples. One of them. I knew there's this Facebook friend of  mine, who had been married to a high school friend of mine for about 48 years.  And as they arrived at retirement, she she looked at her husband and she said,  you know, you were a wonderful teacher. You were a wonderful school  administrator. And you were a great father and dad to our kids. But you know, as a husband, you just don't measure up, she divorced him after 48 years, coming  into retirement, and suddenly he's left without a spouse, somebody he has  shared his life with and suddenly she just gone and and what's more, she said,  You're not the husband that I wanted. And what he observed is that she got  married almost immediately. The ink was barely dry on the divorce decree and  she was married again except this time to a guy with lots of money and now she wears this big rock on her finger and they're traveling to this this home that  home the next home they have homes in like five different places. And now  she's always talking about how life is so good. And one time they were visiting a  an arboretum and at the arboretum there was this pond and in the pond there  were there were several pairs of swans and and one pair that she took a picture  of had their necks intertwined in the heart kind of thing they sometimes see with  swans and she she posted that photo and said this is so inspiring to me. Swans  mate for life. And she said when they when they're young they mate and they  stay that way until they died and and that is just so inspirational. I was thinking  oh my goodness Do you hear what you're saying? It was your your ex husband  say that this was so inspirational his disappointment is so deep and it's because  suddenly his life partner it told him you're not the guy I want to live the last few  years of my life with bankruptcy also causing disappointment for seniors. I have  a I know man whose whose life was focused around running a small implement  business and then he had small farm equipment, not all the great big things. We  see that and this was more for the the hobby farm and the truck farms that are in the area where he lived in and he had really built up built his business over the  years and as he was coming toward being age about 60 or so looking forward to being able to stay home and take care of his wife because she had some very  severe health problems and was bedridden. And he had been able to support  her by, by doing his work and, and getting help to come in and so on. And he  gets to about age 60. And he discovers one day when his bankers come to see  him that he's bankrupt, because there's an employee that embezzled nearly $2  million from the business. And now it was bankrupt. So he went from having  potential for a comfortable retirement to one not so much In fact, he had really  nothing. Nothing with which to care for his wife, nothing, which was which to 

retire on. Talk about disappointment. There's loneliness. I've heard, I've heard a  woman who, whose husband died when when he was 70, they had been going  to work until they were 70. And then they were going to retire. And they were  going to do this. And they were going to do that. And so we were going to and  then she listed off several things in retirement and now her disappointment is  deep. There's a loss of a spouse, and that's so disappointing. Our friends  sometimes don't don't have room for us in their lives anymore, we lose our  mobility. And we have to use now a wheelchair, that we can't get around very  well. We lose our sight. We lose our hearing, we lose our vigor. All of these are  sources of loneliness, because we can't do the things that we used to do the  things that we like to do. And there's great disappointment in that. And how  many more things are there that one loses and then feels loneliness that arises  because of that fact. As people age, they lose their friends in their place of  worship, this one dies, that one moved to Florida another to Arizona, still another went to live with the kids in upstate New York. And so then the church simply is  not the same anymore. seems to have lost something and, and as senior  ministers one of the things we need to be aware of is that for many seniors, they have the feeling and it's probably just on their part, not so much on the young  people's part and the young people seem so young, they say, and I have no way of getting to know them. And it's not so much the fault of either side. It's that  nobody has helped to build that bridge. As senior ministers that's something that we can work on that something we can do. So that the church is the communion of all the saints that is not just the communion of this group, little group or that  little group, but that all the saints find themselves together. That all the saints are the church though. The Holy Catholic Church, the communion of saints, that's  that's what's so disappointing then to a senior. And they don't know. They don't  know why. And they're disappointed. Perhaps the most difficult disappointment is the disappointment we experience with God. Philip Yancey wrote a very  poignant book back 30 years ago called disappointment with God and it was  subtitled three questions no one asks aloud. And it's a it's a meditation of sorts  on this disappointment that we all have. And it's and this disappointment  becomes especially poignant as we get older and as we as we find ourselves in  the years of our our senior citizen status. And it's it's just not easy to deal with  disappointment with God. So he asked these questions and God is so hungry  for a relationship with us, why does he seem so distant? And the senior citizen  realizes that sometimes so deeply. If God if God really wants to have a  relationship with like I said, Why does it seem like he's not here? Why does it  seem like he's forgotten? Why does it seem like we don't have the friendship of  God anymore? And these questions, bear upon senior citizens they've got this  disappointment already and now and now on top of it, there's a disappointment  they have with who God is and what God is doing and and say if God cares for  us, why do bad things happen? The grow older and one of their children 

develops cancer and dies very young. If God cares for me, why did this happen? Why did this bad thing happen? One of the, one of the women in one of my  churches develop cancer when her youngest was in about fifth grade, so about  10-11 years old. And she lived for about 9-10 months and then she died. And I, I  looked at her her mother who buried her daughter and, and you could see  written all over all over her face and over her mind in her soul was if God cares  about why did why did this happen? And if God's promises are true, why they  feel so far away from my personal experience? Why is it seem like it doesn't it  doesn't seem like God is there for me. Philip Yancey deals with these and if you  ever have a chance to pick up that book and read it, you'll you'll discover a  wonderful, wonderful thing that he does is he he asks all these questions, and  he helps us to discern how it is that this disappointment arises. And, and and he  doesn't sugarcoat it. He doesn't say now you we really shouldn't be  disappointed. No he says these are very, very real questions. We just don't dare  to express them. Because what would people think if they heard us saying that?  And so what he does then is he tries to not provide an answer, but instead to  change our perspective. Because he talks about, he doesn't use this word, but  it's the pathos of God. God joins us in our suffering and in our disappointment.  And that's what we need to understand it isn't. God's against us. It's God with  us. Emmanuel, God joins us in our suffering, God joins us in our disappointment, and he is there with us so that our disappointment with God means that we're  experiencing we still experienced this disappointment, but we're now  experiencing it with the companionship of Emmanuel. God with us, not against  us, God with us. And that changes our perspective. We're still disappointed. We  still have this awful feeling that things aren't right. Because they're not. Not in  this broken world. Things aren't right. There's always going to be  disappointment. But God comes into our broken world and He loves us so much that he becomes this human being just like us. And we can call Jesus  Emmanuel, God with us and now we can know that in our suffering God is there  with us there's a wonderful song that African American spiritual there is a balm in Gilead to make the wounded whole. There's a balm in Gilead to heal the sin sick soul. Sometimes I feel discouraged and think my works in vain but then the Holy Spirit revives my soul again. There's a balm in Gilead to make the wounded  whole there's a balm in Gilead to heal the sin sick soul. Do you ever feel  discouraged? Your father is your friend. And if you lack for knowledge, he'll not  refuse to lend. Yeah, there's a balm in Gilead to make the wounded whole,  there's a balm in Gilead to heal the sin sick soul. There's so many hurts and  disappointments for senior citizens. Our task as senior ministers is to bring that  Balm of Gilead to give healing in their time deep need. May that be your calling  and may that be your desire? May that be what you sense God leading you to  do so that there is this balm of Gilead that will that will make a wounded whole.