Somebody at church this morning asked me what one word I would use to describe the season of life that I’m in and after thinking about it for some time, the only word that comes close to describing this season would be disappointment.

Disappointment that every plan I had for my future crumbled in one night.
Disappointment that the person I thought I knew most was actually a stranger.
Disappointment that that same person hurt me in ways that will take more time and effort than desirable to heal from.
Disappointment that I lost my childhood home—my safety net where thousands of bittersweet memories were created.
Disappointment that the Lord didn’t choose to heal my dad in the way that I hoped for.

This morning during service, my pastor preached on the story of Lazarus’ death and said “Do you believe that Jesus is the resurrection even if you just buried someone you love?” and that hit a nerve that I didn’t even know existed.

In these past four weeks without my dad, the Lord’s been so sweetly pressing into my heart to not equate His love with my circumstance. More often than not, it goes quite opposite of the way I hoped for which results in crippling disappointment on my end.

The thing about God is: He wants to set us free from the belief that we know what He needs to do and when and how He needs to do it. Disappointment comes when we place a timeline on God and tell Him what the end result needs to be rather than trusting Him with the process of what He wants it to be. The painful reality is: He’s simply called us to trust the process; not be in control of it. We need to shatter the notion completely that we know best and trust that He will work all things together for good, even if the reality is harsh at the time.

God is the type of God who equates love with trust rather than comfort—He’d much rather see us trust Him even when it’s seemingly impossible rather than see us sit in comfort and have our lives pan out the way we’d hoped it would.

My friends, trust is the willingness to come back to Jesus every time, even amidst the disappointment. We can only dance upon disappointment if Jesus is leading. When we take the lead, we forget how to dance. We stumble. We trip. We fall. But the very second we remove ourselves from the position to lead, He will be faithful to guide our feet every time. The moment He begins to lead us in a way thatHe’s always asking “May I have this dance?”

Freedom comes once we can worship based off of who He is rather than what He does, and the miracle begins when we can stand in the place of disappointment rather than outside of it. Let us dance upon disappointment with a trust that while our lives may spiral out of control for a single moment, our hope is in the One who never operates out of chaos, but in it.