The Un-Used Dress

 A year ago June, I was invited to attend my very first military ball - the Marine Ball, to be exact. It wasn't going to be held until late Fall, but a longtime friend wanted to take me and give me the chance to experience something I'd wanted to do since I was a teenager. You see, my grandfather was a Marine and I've spent the last twenty years of my life working closely with the military community, especially the Marines, offering mental health support to many active personnel and veterans. I have pictures of my grandpa Irving attending the Marine Ball in Hawaii during WWII. My late friend Alex always planned to take me at some point as a thank you for my support of his career and our friendship. But then... Alex died suddenly and the dream got put on hold yet again.  

Last year when this invite came up, I was hopeful this would finally happen after so many years. A mutual friend of mine and Alex offered to have us go in his honor. This would be our tribute to the bond we'd shared. In the months leading up the ball, I purchased a nice dress and reserved the date of the event. I was excited to get dressed up and go. However.... one week out from the Marine Ball, I got a text from my friend: there had been a mixup with the ticket situation, and we weren't going to be able to attend. I was disappointed. We'd been planning this for close to six months! He felt terrible and I tried to be as gracious as possible, but we were both really, really bummed. 

It's now the following summer and I've had a dress hanging in my closet for the last year and nowhere to wear it. It's been a reminder to me of unmet hopes and also the hope of things to come... a bittersweet reality reflective of pretty much all of life. I haven't gotten rid of it yet because I've still had a feeling I'll get to do so somewhere, someday. So I've kept it, believing in faith that my opportunity will come again. But the feeling of disappointment has still been real. Every time I see it, there's a part of me that still feels like it was a bit unfair and sad. I now can say that I relate to and understand a bit more the feeling some people have when they see that empty baby crib where their stillborn child was supposed to be sleeping. Or the engagement ring sitting on the dresser that they'll never get to wear because the wedding got called off. Or the wedding dress that's still hanging up because they got left at the altar or their fiancee died shortly before the big day. I even think of all the young people back in 2020 who never got the graduation they deserved and rightfully looked forward to. 

Disappointment comes to us in all sorts of different ways. We meet with it through our betrayals, denials, delays, mistakes, misunderstandings, transitions, losses. Whenever we come up against something that forces us to say, "It's not supposed to be this way!" we wrestle with the emotions of sadness, anger, rejection, frustration. We're disheartened by what's happened. It feels unfair. Particularly when it involves something like love or death, it can feel as though a part of us has been cruelly ripped away without our consent. It becomes easy to question or even reject God or the idea that there could be any good associated with this situation. 

After years of enduring one hardship after another, I can confidently say that one of the biggest lessons you can learn in life is what to do with disappointment. Can you hope and dream again when something you've wanted or plans you made are suddenly changed and it's not what you wished for? In my years of coming alongside people who are struggling with mental health, a common theme I've noticed is that a lot of the bitterness they carry is born from their disappointment. Their anger comes from a place of deep sadness - a sense that life has been unnecessarily shattered in their opinion and this wasn't how the story was supposed to go. I get that completely. I've had been own seasons where I've felt that way, too. 

We all have some form of the "un-used dress" in our lives... something we think about or look at that just reminds us of a broken dream or plan that didn't go as we wanted. And some of us never get past that. We choose to stay stuck in that for the rest of our lives - our disappointment becomes our identity and the thing that defines us. We vow never to love or try or live fully alive ever again because we can't take ourselves through that kind of pain. While I understand this totally, I also equally believe that a life of resilience, in which we can hold our griefs while also turning our faces toward hope, is what creates the type of meaning that makes a story worth living for. 

If we cannot move past our disappointments in some way, then we will never be able to step into the new chapters that God wants to write for our lives. Perhaps this is why Isaiah 43:18-19 advises that we "forget the former things" and not "dwell on the past." Not because the past doesn't matter or that our disappointments aren't important but that God is always "doing a new thing," "making a way in the wilderness and streams in the wasteland." He is forever redeeming the broken things in your life and sometimes, the hard stuff He allows is a strange way of providentially protecting you and preparing you for something better. In the moment, it may be hard to see how God could be good in letting something so difficult happen. But the promise that every pain carries is the fact that God Himself will never disappoint. When people or plans fail you, He never will. 

And so, the dress continues to hang there... waiting for its moment to be worn and somehow, I feel in my deepest heart that the occasion that warrants its coming out will be even more special because I've been asked to wait.