Trophies
I keep waiting for the day when disappointment doesn't feel like a sucker punch to the stomach. The day when it doesn't feel like a surprise, when the pinch to my flesh doesn't say "Yes, you're real and this is real and it hurts."
I keep waiting for that day.
Every time I think it has come, that I'm so clothed in strength and dignity that I can laugh at whatever comes, well, something comes and I'm the last one smiling.
This week has been a slow sucker punch to the stomach. I saw it coming and didn't even duck, I walked headlong into it. I welcomed it. I probably even asked for it.
But here we are on the swing side of things and all I know is that my heart hurts and I feel like a fool. That sounds dramatic and it probably is. But it's also the truth: that really is how I feel.
I've been meditating on Proverbs 31 for the past week and I'd like to blame my heartsickness on that. I typically stay far away from that passage because all it tells me is that I'm a lost cause. If that's what a man wants in a wife, I'm a certain spinster.
But today I've been meditating on the woman who's laughing at whatever comes. Staying up all night and buying fields are better left to the real trophy wives, I'll be good if I can chuckle at uncertainty.
Today though, when the punch hit my stomach and I had to look away before the tears let loose, I thought: maybe laughing at whatever comes is actually the hardest part of that list of near-impossibilities?
Maybe buying a field and burning the midnight oil are only possible through the strength and dignity which says "I don't know how this will turn out, but let's laugh on the threshold anyway!"
Maybe disappointment is thwarted not by the lack of sad things, but by the expectation that the sad things aren't the end of things?
I don't have much more for you tonight. The sucker punch still hurts and the tears are still near. But maybe this is how strength and dignity are built? One redeemed disappointment at a time.