“Be aware of that place where you are brought to tears. That’s where your heart is and that’s where your treasure is.” -“The Alchemist”, Paulo Cohen
I cried today. I don’t cry a lot. But I cried today… just a little tear or two that squeaked out and dripped down over a biting lip and a scrunched up face. I didn’t want to cry, but my heart hurt. And when your heart hurts and there’s no band-aid that goes deep enough you just have to put down the big girl mask and let out a little tear.
It’s ok.
Because sometimes when you get your heart set on the $4.99 fish and chips meal at Captain D’s… so set that you can almost taste it… and then you open the bag only to find that they messed up your order and gave you shrimp instead. Well… It hurts.
It hurts because the highway was too busy to turn around and make it right.
It hurts because the receipt said the right thing. The lady in the window confirmed the order. The sides were right. But the main thing you were hoping for was wrong. So very wrong. And so very disappointing.
The casual response would have been to jerk the car around and set those people straight. That’s what my social media account would have told me. They would have shouted go back and get your food right. Go back and tell them how ridiculous it was that the ball was dropped. Call them and complain. Contact the manager. Tell corporate how stupid this was and how this place needs to get their sh** together. Social media would have said you deserve a coupon. You deserve an apology. You deserve to eat what you wanted (because truly, if I had wanted popcorn shrimp I would have gone someplace else). They would have told me how horrible that particular Captain D’s is. Or they would have told me their story of the time they went to this one place and this awful thing was done and they would never go back.
But my heart was really too broken to consult social media on such a weighty matter.
“Are you crying?” my husband asked, baffled. (Because how do you console a crazy woman crying over fish?)
“Yes… but not for the reason you think.”
Yes. My heart was broken. I was beside myself with disappointment. Because someone dropped the ball. Someone put the wrong thing in the wrong box. Or the wrong box in the wrong bag. And even though all the proper procedures were followed there is nothing that can be put in place to perfectly prevent simple human error. But mostly my heart broke for the alternate universe (that is actually the norm) where I storm back and roll my eyes and cast a bitter word at the woman who works the window and point a finger at the young man at the fryer trying to quickly read a computer screen during a busy lunch hour. Because it happens all the time.
We get disappointed. And we disappoint. And no matter how many structures or procedures or cushions of righteousness and rightness we put in place to protect ourselves and those we love from the discomfort of disappointment, someone will almost always drop the ball.
I cried because everywhere I look people are getting shrimp dinners instead of fish.
And it hurts. Disappointment hurts your heart. And it makes you cold. It breaks trust. It clouds hope. It ruins so much so deeply that we start to miss the good. We lose sight of the beauty. We forget to find something to praise.
If we’re not careful, disappointment becomes a way we live our life. Living with an attitude of ingratitude. Harboring our hurts. And when hurts are harbored and hidden for too long, they begin to squeak out like tears here and there. Tears of criticism. Tears of anger. Tears of mistrust. Tears of bitterness. Harsh words become easy. Complaining becomes commonplace. Feeling we deserve better or we could do better or we are better begins to divide us from this disappointing world. And when disappointment divides us from other humans we lose so much more.
Today the smoky mountains in front of me are clouded by haze. Some days they are gone completely. Some days we look out the window and quip, “Hey! Who stole our mountains!?”
And some days I look out the window and cry, “Hey! Who stole my joy?”
“Who stole my grace?”
“Who stole my patience?”
And nine times out of ten the thief came in the night and planted his seeds of disappointment and the world turned gray with haze. And the brilliant rainbow of rose-colored expectations gave way to rain and that rain began to infect everyone I touched.
The world reeks with disappointment nowadays. It permeates our society. I could list the ways, but you’d stop reading because it could carry on well into the night. The lady at the drive thru is disappointed that she didn’t get the raise she so desperately needed and the man by the fryer is disappointed that his girlfriend is cheating on him and his girlfriend is disappointed that her father abused her instead of protected her and her father is disappointed that he couldn’t do better for his family. And we’re all reeling from the disappointment that surrounds us.
But somehow in our bitterness we’ve turned to blaming everyone else. Projecting our expectations of perfection on to the people around us who are needing grace just as badly as we are.
I cried in my shrimp dinner because I can’t save the little boy who hurts others because he is so deeply hurt. I cried because I can’t take back the harsh words spoken in offense. I cried because I can’t make that dad just love his daughter without expectation. And I can’t right the wrongs of poor communication or hasty assumptions. I cried about my shrimp because I just wanted fish. But mostly I just wanted to hug that woman and tell her that it was ok. That I knew it wasn’t intentional or personal or malicious. I knew it was an accident. And I wanted to take back the hurt that I was feeling in my heart because who am I to complain about shrimp when the girl on the bus is hoping for a loaf of bread tonight?
I cried today.
Rediscovering Yesterday 