The Scripture ~ Why are you down in the dumps, dear soul? Why are you crying the blues? Fix my eyes on God— soon I’ll be praising again. God’s puts a smile on my face. God is my God. Psalm 42:11 The Message
The Spiritual Focus ~ We must accept finite disappointment, but never lose infinite hope. Martin Luther King Jr.
The Devotion ~ Dealing with disappointment is a life skill that is being taught to children as young as 6 months. Techniques range from slow breathing (pranayama) to yoga play, as ways for kids to step back from a situation and deal with the disappointment. Stepping back from the situation doesn’t necessarily change it but allows time to reflect, reevaluate the importance and give appropriate weight to the disappointment. When kids are able to learn these techniques they become creative individuals, they move forward with tools to live in healthy lives. As adults we have the same techniques available to us and more.
We can choose to wallow in our disappointment or we can step back, breathe, reevaluate, give proper weight to the disappointment and let it go. This does not disregard the disappointment, in a Pollyannaish way, but instead gives us a path forward to deal with it.
The beauty of yoga is that as our ability to do some asanas change, we may be disappointed but we realize that asana was just one path to the breath. We have hope! In our faith practices we may find that over time things we thought were absolutely needed to believe in God change, yet we realize God is there, as promised, encourage us and giving us hope. As we practice dealing with disappointment in our faith and/or practices, a mantra to consider is, now is not forever and forever is God’s.
Breath Prayer
Inhale: God is
Exhale: Forever
