YOU ALL DISAPPOINT ME (but read on.. that's just the ugly beginning)


You all disappoint me. 

That’s what I learned about myself the other day. I was having dinner with a friend and she said, “yeah Heidi that’s always been a thing with you. People disappoint you.” 

WAaaaahhh?????

Like, is what she’s saying… is she doesn’t live constantly disappointed in people? 

Constantly disappointed in herself?

No. She doesn’t. Apparently not everyone walks around just super disappointed in themselves and everyone else. 

I did some work on it. Wrote out my philosophy of people. I have a lot of expectations of us all. And we are all very flawed and disappointing. 

I kept exploring my thoughts. 

My Christianity has been very disappointing to me because I haven’t become very loving, despite a ton of rule abiding and Bible reading, meeting attending, fun sacrificing etc etc (which by the way many of you didn’t do and I have so judged you and I’m so disappointed). 

I think disappointment is another name for judgment. I have an idea that I hold as a rule or expectation - or norm.  I meet you and make a swift appraisal and see you are quite amazing, and then I immediately assemble a manual that predicts how wonderful you will be and what I can expect from you. Then you violate my manual with some behavior or opinion and I judge you. 

So I looked it up. Disappointment in the Merriam-Webster dictionary says this:
1 : unhappiness from the failure of something hoped for or expected to happen 
 2 : someone or something that fails to satisfy hopes or expectations

There’s this saying out there that goes “you do you, I’ll do me.” Like let me be me and it’s none of your business and when you do things that are different from what I would do, I’m not going to micro-manage or try to stop you or control you because… I value our differences and I like that we are not the same. 

I often mess up personality tests because I’m trying to win. I have a believe that there is an ideal personality and I’m always trying to have it. Growing up I thought my life goal was to convert people to my opinions and beliefs and preferences in life. I remember trying to get my sister to do a flip on the trampoline. She said she “DIDN’T WANT TO.” I told her she didn’t know that she didn’t want to because she’d never done one, and once she’d done one, she’d love it and she’d know how much she actually always wanted to do one all along. 

Sincere. Manipulative. Sorry my sister.  She disappointment me because she didn’t think what I thought. 

Here’s where I’ve gone with it. First, I realized disappointment with myself and other people isn’t like gravity or a natural law of nature. It’s based on a belief. The belief that I should be a certain way, that there is a manual we all share (how loud to laugh, how much alchohol to drink, certain Christian swears you are permitted to say but not others, clothes you can and can not wear, amount of money you should make, how you should or shouldn’t eat… it’s a big fat long manual). I thought I lived my life according to the Bible and the conclusions I came to about how I should and shouldn’t live, I thought they came from God. 

But they didn’t. Not by a long freaking shot (inserted nice appropriate to most Christian swear there). 

I haven’t enjoyed most of my life because I have believed I was a failure and have mostly seen everyone around me as failing too. I know. Harsh. Imagine living in my head. No fun. Imagine being my friend. Imagine being my kid or my husband. Yikes.  

After looking at the angry, sad, frustrated and alienating results of this belief, this belief that there is a law of operations for all of us and we mostly always fail… I replaced this belief with another one. It’s an emerging belief. It’s like a fragile little plant or.. a clumsy puppy.. 

But … I now choose to believe there isn’t one right and best way to be. There are unique ways. The fastest isn’t the best. The strongest isn’t the winner. It’s not a contest. It’s not a test. And sometimes the mess that we make, is actually a wonder and a beauty and an incredibly sacred place to be (and God is right in there with us. He’d visit me in hell if I decided to make my bed there). 

This might scare lots of Christians because we have been fed a very heavy diet of “ONE WAY”!!!!!!   If you mean one way, and no one thinks and everyone sings the same songs, does the same VBS, has the same programs, and you could enter 500 churches and they pretty much all look the same, sound the same, feel the same… Everyone reads the same books, blogs, has the same standards and anyone who does different is … JUDGED.. then that saddens me. How did variety and differentiations and unique expressions become dangerous?

Anyway. 

This new belief that there is not ONE WAY to be, has allowed me to become curious and look at other people and say, “Oh wow. You would do it that way. Neat! I would have never thought of that.” I allows me to have a Christmas tree that expresses my family, not just me. It allows me to be friends with someone who gossips because I can love her for who she is, not how she’s is or isn’t upholding my “one way manual - the methods of how to be according to Heidi Karlsson as she claims to have received it from God.”

SO. IF YOU KNOW ME, YOU HAVE DISAPPOINTED ME. IF YOU HAVE FELT IT AND IT HURT… SO SORRY. SO so SO SORRY. 

I guess you can rest in the verse that says when you judge others it comes back on you pressed down, shaken together, running over. Which is how I have lived. Under a black cloud of judgment. 

If you want to tell me how my judgments hurt you, I will agree with you and apologize. 

It is so wonderful to walk around un-disappointed with other people. With myself. So wonderful that I don't have to decide decide whether or not YOU made a good choice when you moved away instead of stayed at your home church, worked instead of went to university, and on it goes. 

You do you. I’ll do me. (I'll even LOVE me.. which is actually quite wonderful but I'll talk about that more later). And it will be fun to see our differences. I expect explosions of laughter and great guffaws when weird is met with wonder instead of a down the nose gaze of rejection and shame. 

Happy New Year. Own it. Can't wait to see you and have no cloud expectations or rain of disappointments in the weather between us. 


Comments

Charity said…
Great post Heidi!

There is a lot to unpack when it comes to judgement and disappointment.

The bible talks a lot about judgement and consequence. When Jesus was asked to judge a prostitute, He certainly had the authority to do so, but simply said "You who are without sin, cast the first stone." And then he, who we believe to be without sin, did not throw a stone. What volume that speaks. That even where offense is valid, the response is not fixed.

And thank God for that! I fall short. All the damn time. (questionably acceptable Christian swear?)

I have certainly disappointed a lot of people who judged me without knowing my situation. Likewise, I have been disappointed with people without knowing their circumstances. I have a long history of offending friends who had un-written rule books on the expectations of our friendship.

"You do you, I'll do me" is a necessary starting place for any relational growth. There can be no intimacy if we live in a state of offense. But I think it is a starting place. There can also be no intimacy if we never challenge each other, which comes from a place of bias of our own opinions. But if we are yielding, we can accept that change is also within.

Thank you for your transparency. It always makes me stop and reflect.
9:02 AM
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