Free Letting Go of Disappointments and Painful Losses by Pam Vredevelt Page B

change, or am I changing the things I can?
    When Nathan was born, cards and letters poured in from family and friends. They wanted so much to help and share our grief. One letter enclosed a newspaper clipping that challenged me to open my heart to the new direction my life had taken. It helped me see that by focusing on what I didn’t have, instead of on what I did, I was causing much of my own anguish.
    The clipping was a little story penned years ago by Emily Perl Kingley. Anticipating the birth of a baby, she wrote, is like planning a fabulous vacation. Then delivery day comes, the wheels of the jumbo jet touch down, and you awaken from your slumber to hear a flight attendant’s cheery voice say, “Welcome to Holland.”
    “Holland!”
you exclaim. “What do you mean,
Holland?
I signed up for Italy! I’m supposed to be in Italy. All my life I’ve dreamed of going to Italy.”
    But there’s been a change in the flight plan. They’ve landed in Holland and there you must stay.
    The important thing is that they haven’t taken you to a horrible, disgusting, filthy place, full of pestilence, famine, and disease. It’s just a
different
place.
    So you must go out and buy new guidebooks. And you must learn a whole new language. And you will meet a whole new group of people you would never have met.
    It’s just a different place. It’s slower paced than Italy, less flashy than Italy. But after you’ve been there a while and you catch your breath, you look around, and you begin to notice that Holland has windmills. Holland has tulips. Holland even has Rembrandts.
    But everyone you know is busy comingand going from Italy, and they’re all bragging about what a wonderful time they had there. And for the rest of your life, you will say, “Yes, that’s where I was supposed to go. That’s what I had planned.”
    And the pain of that will never, ever, ever go away, because the loss of that dream is a very significant loss. But if you spend your life mourning the fact that you didn’t get to Italy, you may never be free to enjoy the special and very lovely things about Holland. 1
    Shifting our focus from what we don’t have to what we do have brings a quiet calm to a heart torn with conflict. Peace comes when we make a simple choice to take a deep breath and say to ourselves,
I am exactly where I am supposed to be at this moment.
It means that we stop wasting precious time and emotional energy wishing things were different, longing to be someone else, or wanting another set of circumstances. Refocusing can lead us away from despair toward a greater sense of well-being as we trust that “my times are in Your hand” (Psalm 31:15, NKJV ).
    As we begin to focus upon God, the things of the Spirit will take shape before our inner eyes.
    A. W. T OZER
    It doesn’t matter what the circumstance is. It may be singleness or widowhood. It may be a heartbreaking marriage, infertility, disability, betrayal, a child gone astray, job loss, or a lingering illness. Whatever the life situation is in which we find ourselves with no control, we can
refocus.
With Paul we can learn to concentrate on “whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable … anything [that] is excellent or praiseworthy” (Philippians 4:8).
    This mental discipline is part of the “secret” that Paul described a few verses later:
    I know what it is to be in need, and I know what it is to have plenty. I have learned the secret of being content in any and every situation.… I can do everything through him who gives me strength.
    P HILIPPIANS 4:12–13
    As life would have it, there will be many times when you and I will find ourselves in a “different place.” That much is clear. But
God
will be with us in that different place. And as we open our hearts to Him, He will give us the strength we need to carry on. He will carry us through our disappointments and painful losses to a place of