The other day the Lord brought to my mind the story of Mary and Joseph right before the birth of Jesus. I began to think about their long journey to get to Bethlehem. How on this journey, they must have been so ready to get to a hotel with a nice bed, take a bath and get ready for this baby to come. Much to their surprise, they arrive at the inn and the innkeeper says to them, “There is no room in the inn.” I can only imagine what Mary and Joseph might have thought and felt in that moment, “What do you mean there is no room in the inn?” This would be like getting to a Hilton and they say, “there is no vacancy tonight.” “No vacancy, how could this be?” Mary could have thought, “how could God do this to us right now?” “He’s God, why wouldn’t he make a way for this hotel to have vacancy for his son to be born?” It’s like in that moment all expectations of what this birth was going to be like were literally obliterated with that one line, “There is no room in the inn.”
So often in life we can face our own, “no room in the inn” moments. We know God has spoken something or believe that it is a God moment and all of our expectations are believing one way only to find out it doesn’t happen at all how we expect. Often in those moments our disappointments can set in and we begin to doubt, “is this really God’s plan?” For Mary and Joseph this wasn’t the first time things didn’t work out how they thought. Even getting pregnant with Jesus before they were married I am sure was not how they were expecting to begin a family. If it’s one thing I’m learning more and more in my walk with God is that he usually does things that are way different from my plan and expectations. It usually also includes many moments of disappointments, disillusionments and lots of questions. Sometimes we think as Christians that we shouldn’t feel the disappointment of having our “first child” in a beautiful clean hotel instead of a stinky barn. Or maybe for you it isn’t a physical child but the birth of your dreams, the plans you had for your life are not what you expected. God is taking too long, it’s not the way it was supposed to be.
How do we take the time to recognize the disappointment and process the loss of expectations? I think we first have to realize that they exist and take a moment to voice our disappointment in the situations that aren’t turning out how we thought. To take those to God and say things like, “Help me through this, I’m angry, upset, this isn’t the way I saw this happening.” The difficulty is that sometimes it can be difficult to not get stuck between the hotel and the barn. Sometimes we can want to camp there too long and stay in a place of doubt and discouragement, by our circumstances not being what we expected. The joy of the birth of Jesus coming I am sure dissipated the disappointment of being in the barn for Mary, but what if our birth is still years away? If we can fix our eyes on God and what he is still wanting to do in and through us in spite of our difficult situations and disappointments, we will still see God’s plans unfold in great ways in our lives. I will be honest, I often get stuck after the “hotel” not meeting my expectation, or feeling like God has let me down. The interesting thing is that the whole scenario of Jesus’ life was so unconventional and not what people or I am sure anyone expected, but that is what Jesus wanted so it wouldn’t be something we could predict or plan for, but would be a God sized plan. This story can give us a sense of consolation that if you or I feel this way, then we may very well be right on track, right in the will of God, even if it doesn’t feel like it. Your life may feel like it’s happening in a stinky barn, but it’s in that barn that something God sized could be being birthed. Shepherds are miraculously about to show up, God is going to take care of you and I. The imperfections of our situation could be God’s perfect situation to show up in a miraculous way. I’m not claiming that if you have walked through extreme disappointments that it’s easy, I have in my life too, but I keep thinking if Mary and Joseph could make it then so can I and the joy on the other side of the disappointments will show up at some point if I continue to cling to Jesus.
Cori Writes 