by Andy Wood on May 21, 2009
I want to let you in on a poorly-kept secret. I can’t dance.
There. Now somebody besides, well, everybody who knows me is aware.
It’s a disappointment to my ballroom-longing wife. It was a “you-can-get-over-it” point of conversation to my daughter when she planned her wedding reception. I knew I couldn’t, but tried. She insisted I would, and was grateful for the moment. My tuxedo pants nearly fell off, and given the way the dance was going, that would have been a relief.
That said, good dancers fascinate me. The skill. The agility. The confidence. The creativity. But dancing is one of those skills I have relegated to the pile items left off my blueprints.
There are others. [click to continue…]
by Andy Wood on May 14, 2009
(The Four Faces of Disappointment – Part 2)
I’m not asking for much. I just want all my expectations fulfilled, and a complete removal of all limitations.
Of course… then I wouldn’t need God. Then I’d BE God.
Disappointments are a startling, sometimes rude reminder that the job of God of the Universe has already been filled.
Yesterday I mentioned that in my own experiences of painful disappointment, like the experience of the children of Israel, four “faces” of disappointment have emerged. The first two were delays and distressing people. But I have found two other ways that God deliberately allows us to “feel the burn.”
3. Dead Ends
These have to do with measurable limitations – things like life expectancy, dollars, and distance. Dead ends often lead us to question God’s integrity, because He seems to be contradicting Himself.
It’s like one man said, “I thought becoming a Christian was the end of all my troubles.” It is – the front end!
Examples of dead ends are everywhere: [click to continue…]
by Andy Wood on October 24, 2008
Somewhere in the back story of the drama that is your life, you are rehearsing a Cinderella story. One that transforms you from zero to hero, from reject to regal. You imagined it as a kid in ways that were unique to you. This dream may have been fed by caring parents, or it may have been an escape from the harshness of your world.
Simply put, you dreamed of glory.
Not vainglory, mind you. Something more. An image that said you mattered. Belonged. Were wonderfully adequate for the role you’d been chosen – for your quest.
Then came the collision. Dreams were broadsided by disappointments. You never quite figured out how to translate that high school stardom into a career or a destiny. Or worse, you actually found your place in the world, but stared in the mirror at a fraud. Maybe you got what (or who) you’d always wanted, and you bombed. Maybe you just settled into paying the bills and keeping house, and woke up a generation later wondering what happened.
Sometimes I think our greatest fear or vulnerability isn’t the evil we’re all capable of. What we most dread or most grieve is that we’re just so ordinary. [click to continue…]
