Worse than Disappointment

Sep 18, 2014 by Jeanette Hanscome

We had a major disappointment in our family this week. After months of waiting for basketball sign-ups, and preparing for tryouts, the league didn’t get enough coaches and Nathan’s team got cut. They warned parents that more coaches were needed, and I’d already received an e-mail informing me of Nate’s assignment to a team that still lacked one, but it still came as a crushing blow.

Why did he get placed on a coach-less team? Why not some other kid? Do you have any idea what my child has been through? I wanted to spew to everyone with power, as if we were the only family in the East Bay with a sad story behind our two-year hiatus from sports.

I was so tempted to volunteer to coach. Did being legally blind and completely void of athletic ability really matter? Would the league even care, considering their desperate need? The fact that Nathan would care restrained me.

I hated delivering the bad news to my 12-year-old. It didn’t matter that the decision probably had more to do with who knew who than how well Nathan did during tryouts, or that at least ten other boys got the same e-mail. Those mean, heartless coaches had made my baby cry and Mama Bear wanted to write a really snotty letter.

We waited all summer for this!

We saved!

We shot baskets until after dark! (Okay, Nathan shot baskets.)

The site said, “Everyone gets placed on a team”! What’s that about?

But what stung most was a phrase that Nathan kept repeating: “I stunk.”

“You did not.” And I meant it. He put his whole heart into his try-out, like he wanted more than anyone else out there.

That sad phrase would not let go of me: “I stunk.”

Why?

Because that has so often been my first response to disappointment—I stink.

I failed.

I fell short.

I let them down.

How often is that not true at all? But how many times has it paralyzed me anyway?

That is exactly what I don’t want for Nathan.

The disappointments hurt, and I would rather not see him face them, but they are part of life. Sometimes things just don’t work out and we never get the full scoop on why. Walking away thinking, I didn’t make it because I stink, on the other hand, should not be part of life. I have no idea how to instill that in him but to model it.

What about you?

How do you respond to disappointment, especially when it feels like rejection?