Managing Disappointment, Part One

I really dislike letting people down. Because I tend to be a reliable, stable, dependable person, it hits me hard when I come up short. And sometimes it’s just unavoidable.

It’s an inescapable reality both because I have faults and I’m not perfect; but it’s also due to the fact that I can’t control the world around me as much as I like to pretend I do.

Because of that, a few weeks ago I had to make a heart-wrenching phone call. Months ago, I had arranged for my students to go to Mexico for a mission trip and stay with an organization that I love in Ensenada. We were going to help build a second story onto a church building that exists because my youth group has been a faithful partner with them for ten years. We planned to do community outreach and show tangible love to the children of that impoverished neighborhood.

But there has been a growing amount of violence in Baja California, and the time came when my leadership team decided it just wasn’t safe to take teenagers across the border. The painful phone call I made was to tell my beloved ministry friends at Rancho Agua Viva that even though they were expecting us in 11 days, we wouldn’t be coming. It caught them by surprise and I was aware that my phone call had dramatically changed how they planned to spend a week of their lives. We talked through how to communicate this to the pastor of that church that was now going to have to wait for that second story on his building; I tried to emphasize just how much I regretted having to give this news, but I just didn’t have the words to tell them how hard it is to say no to being with them.

I know without a doubt that making that phone call was the right thing to do, and I shouldn’t bear the weight of disappointing them. But I still heft that burden onto my own shoulders, because I feel that someone must carry it. How tragic and irresponsible it would be if I were flippant about the impact that news carries with it. YET…the way I manage my disappointment in having to call is to know that the call MUST be made. Someone must be strong and have the courage to do a task that no one wants; so I picked up my phone, and as an act of love to my friends in Mexico and in Walnut Creek, I called with bad news.