The Trauma of “What could Have Been. By Jim Banks, www.jimandpatbanks.com
We have all experienced the disappointment of a promise unfulfilled or an obligation not met. It is an inevitable part of life. People can and will let us down, even the most honorable and well intentioned of them.
However, in the last 20+ years of helping people recover their lives from the ravages of all sorts of trauma I have found one of the most difficult issues to resolve is the trauma that results from dreams, hopes and expectations that are cruelly crushed when a ministry one is involved in falls apart or gets destroyed by its founders, or its Board.
It is hard to unravel because there are so many complex elements to it; the lost comradery of those you’ve become bonded to in the fight to establish, build or expand it, the trust and appreciation broken by those whose unspoken vision is far different than the one you gave your heart to, the broken and abandoned dream whose realization appeared as being just around the corner, and finally, the loss of all that could have been that in many instances encompassed your life goals and ambitions.
Then there are the complications created by the questions that have no answers; Did we disappoint God? How did I not see this coming? I was thoroughly convinced that this is what God had ordained and we had all agreed that this was our mission. I’ve been betrayed by someone (or a group) that I trusted.
I have seen this happen to many on staff when churches closed their doors, when dedicated volunteers were left holding a bag of unfulfilled expectations when a formerly successful ministry suddenly ceased to exist. The loss was so personally devastatingly that many of them not only lost more than their place of influence and contribution, but faith in God as well. Faith that cannot survive a severe test is not actually faith, but a false confidence based in presumption and the loss of it is usually blamed on God – for surely He wants what I want.
The problem is that as the KJV says, “we see through a glass darkly.“ (1Corinthians 13:12) We don’t have all the facts, “we see in part” nor are we privy to all the hidden motivations or viewpoints of all the other important players. As Samuel said, “man looks on the outward appearance, but God looks on the heart.” (1 Samuel 16:7)
I have written before on the ministry of disappointment and for a number of people “what could have been” seems to be the devastating pinnacle of it all. A major component of it is an element of the lack of personal value that is deemed to be satiated by being part of a goal that is bigger than the individual contributors to the effort. It is common that he or she who falls victim to this level of disappointment are usually serving the vision of another. The orphan mentality actually postures a person for this soul crushing loss, ensuring that it will not only wounds the soul, but the human spirit as well. The vision we gave ourselves to may have been given only in part by God, yet we can only see a portion of the whole picture and if we don’t see where our piece of the puzzle fits into the whole, we are tempted to believe that it’s the whole picture and we adopt tunnel vision. To also presume that what we see is a crucial part in God’s Kingdom plans for us, the city or the nation, is certainly motivating for is, but it certainly isn’t the whole picture, and is also one of the contributing factor in such deep disappointment.
Another factor is the system of the world, the teachings of the enemy himself. It desires us to live life out of our heads alone, abandoning our heart. We have to figure everything out on our own. The strategy behind it is to cause us to become your own god. We get to decide what’s good for us and what isn’t. We get to decide what we’ll give ourselves to and what we’ll will bypass. We are in control and the fullness of it allows us to participate in church, even help build it, but it allows us to set up our own value system totally apart from Biblical teaching, and still be comfortable with the dualism.
The promise of God to each of us is “He knows the plans He has for us; plans for good, not for evil, to give us a future and a hope.” What is this plan? “To conform us to the image of Christ” regardless of the circumstances we encounter or the agendas we have. It is also spelled out in Ephesians 4:13, “until we all attain to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to mature manhood, to the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ;” How do we protect ourselves from this particular form of trauma? We can’t. Fact #1, Don Potter put it aptly, “So you got hurt in church. Do you know what that says? It says, you went to church.” So long as humans are involved, we’ll get hurt. Fact # 2, if you are serving in a church you are serving someone else’s vision, the execution of which is subject to change on a whim. Fact # 3, one can never be certain that the vision the leader declares is directly from God and is all at God’s direction. It is always processed through the leader’s personal filter(s) and many times they are simply trying to replicate something that worked well somewhere else. Fact # 4, the primary method God uses to mature us and teach us more of who He is and what He’s capable of is in the midst of situations that suddenly explode and fall to pieces.
We will all experience disasters in ministry, however, the best way to not become a mortally wounded casualty is to know your own purpose and to keep it before you at all times. When we join ourselves with a ministry we have to be sure that we are fulfilling our purpose even in the context of serving another person’s vision. It is true that God will not give you your ministry if you cannot submit yourself to another’s ministry. Many have run off to start their own ministry because they didn’t get to do what they wanted to where they were. You can fulfil your purpose anywhere and under anyone, if you know exactly what it is. And you have to know what season you’re in in its attainment and fulfillment. The vast majority of those who were devastated in ministry weren’t operating in their purpose, presuming that serving in a ministry was it. My wife and I were in the golf business in the late 90’s and we joke that we prayed for more people in the golf business by accident that we do now on purpose. I’m not sure that’s factual, but the point is, this is our purpose, and this is what we’ll do in the midst of however we choose to make a living. We are healers. It is who we are and we’ll probably be found do it from our death beds.
The only way to know who you are and the purpose for which you were created is in the presence of the One who created you. Get there and don’t leave until it’s clear. He is the only one who knows the plans He has for you “that will give you a future and a hope.” (Jeremiah 29:11)
If you need help sorting all it out, contact us.
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