Purposeful Living

5 Ways to Enjoy Your Life When You’re Disappointed

Birdsong tangled in the spruce boughs the morning of my birthday.  It was going to be a good day – the kind of day with space to breathe and bask and reflect on the past year.  If there’s ever a day when you really want to enjoy your life, it’s your birthday, you know?

I was going to drink green tea, tickle the little one ‘til he belly-laughed, and walk beneath the veil of hemlocks in the valley.  We would order pizza and wings for dinner and laugh with light hearts while we ate.

Instead, the school declared a snow day, I got to teach my kids at the kitchen table, fights broke out, no one wanted to walk beneath snow-laden hemlocks, and when the pizza came, all I really wanted to do was lock myself in the basement and enjoy the silence.

How do you enjoy your life when your plans are derailed?

How do you lean into what God has for you when you wanted sunshine and got a blizzard instead?

It feels downright unfair when God sends a detour and your happy day is turned into a hard day.  You start to feel angry – like the joy you were entitled to up and slipped out the window.

I think about all this as I watch the winter storm blow across the fields outside.  Maybe the secret to enjoying your life isn’t about happy circumstances.  Maybe it’s about a willing heart.

5 Ways to Enjoy Your Life

Do you want to enjoy your life?  Consider these truths:

1. You will enjoy your life when you give it away.

Jesus offers the following admonition: “So therefore, any one of you who does not renounce all that he has cannot be my disciple” (Luke 14:33 ESV).

Sometimes I get to feeling miserable because my focus is on myself.  My eyes are on what’s lacking in my life.  Jesus offers a paradox when he tells us that the most abundant life is the life that’s given away.

What’s this look like?

We give our time to invest in others.

We give our energy to help those in need.

This is the great paradox: whoever refreshes others will be refreshed (see Prov. 11:25 NIV).

2. You will enjoy your life when you put the needs of others ahead of your own.

The Apostle Paul reminds us of the following truth: Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility count others more significant than yourselves (Phil.  2:3).

Do you want deeper joy?

Find someone to serve.

Find someone who needs your love.

Encourage someone.

Make up your mind to stop searching for someone to serve you, and be the gift in someone’s life.

3. You will enjoy your life when you learn to hold your plans loosely.

I tend to feel upset when my plans don’t work out.  I have high hopes for how my days will unfold, and when my plans fall apart, I’m resentful and frustrated.

Do you really want more joy?

Learn to live with open hands.

Make plans, but receive what God brings to your days.

A mentor once encouraged me with these words, “You will find the joy you crave when you learn to embrace the reality that is your life.”

What reality is your life?  What reality are you pushing back against?

Are you tired of hurrying to check boxes off some unwritten list?

Pause today, friend.

God is not calling you to a life of hurry.  If you are hurrying to check off all the boxes, you are likely chasing goals God never asked you to set.

God is not calling you to a life of hurry. If you are hurrying to check off all the boxes, you are likely chasing goals God never asked you to set. #hurry #goals #slowingdown Click To Tweet

4. You will enjoy your life when you live slowly.

Break up with hurry.

Pursue a present way of living.

Look long into the eyes of the people you love.

Pause to breathe.  Pause to glance heavenward.

Give thanks often.

5. You will enjoy your life when you watch for God in the ordinary.

God has promised to never leave you.  He is with you in the routine tasks of your ordinary days.

Do you really want more joy in life?

Slow your pace to watch for what God is doing all around you – especially when your plans fall apart.

Do you really want more joy in life? Slow your pace to watch for what God is doing all around you – especially when your plans fall apart. #joy #joyinGod Click To Tweet

God is sovereign over your shattered plans.  He is working through the disappointments.  Will you slow your pace to listen to what he is speaking?

~~~

As daylight faded on my disappointing birthday, I gathered the little ones.  I gathered them with their frustrations and needs and bad moods, and we snuggled on the couch.

It wasn’t perfect.

But they are mine, and my life is full, and God is always good – even when my plans fall apart.

An Invitation for You:

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I’m passionate about equipping others to encounter God in powerful and life-changing ways. When I’m not writing, you’ll find me hiking, jogging, exploring wild places with my three young children and husband, leading small groups, and mentoring younger women. A certified special education teacher, I am on leave from the classroom for a season of chasing frogs and playing in creeks with my little ones. Most of all, the compassionate love of Jesus has forever ravished my heart, and I'm emphatic about making his love known to the world.