When Disappointment Meets Unmet Expectation
Releasing Perfection on New Year Goals and Leaning Into God’s Redemption
It’s a Friday Morning…
I’m usually excited.
But today, my positive perspective feels thin. It’s worn down, unreliable, seeming to have failed me. I cling tightly to perfection and grieve quietly at my inability to reach it. In years past, the new year has stirred a resilient motivation to dream bigger, do better. The new year is an open door to improve the places where I often fall short.
But this year, I’m nervous.
With each new beginning, my focus shifts from potential possibility to perceived failure – focusing on all the goals I have yet to meet with the persistent skepticism that I can achieve them.
Why set goals that can break?
Why create standards that will eventually fall short?
Why set expectations that may never be met?
I feel the pressure to rehearse a performance I’m no longer excited to give. The quiet nudge encouraging me to reach higher and dream bigger seems to fall silent to the screams that I’ll only fall short again.
Rather than excitement to achieve, I find myself in a graveyard of unrealistic standards – every tombstone a challenge I failed to meet by no one else’s expectations but my own. I fear the environment of it all will wear me down, eating at me until I do nothing but sit in my own silence, never processing or reaching for more.
When Hope Feels Fragile
It’s January 16, and I sit here with my Bible open and a coffee cup in front of me. Yet, my mind is distracted, and my heart is racing with anxiousness.
But here I am, ready, despite my emotions.
My 2026 Goals:
- I want to live presently –
without the worry of tomorrow; without guilt of who I may be letting down; without replaying conversations and wondering if I should have done or said something different. If we want to bring joy to other people, there is no room for that insecurity anymore.
- I want to live peacefully –
confident of who I am in Christ, not striving to prove who I am because I know whose I am. We are children of the King – children of royalty don’t need to beg for approval when their future has already been declared.
- I want to live intentionally –
soaking in the goodness of God in the quiet moments of my life, so that in the public moments – relationships, conversations, and responsibilities – His goodness and love exude naturally in those spaces.
I want to intentionally live eternally.
But you can’t do that when you are constantly doubting who you are and the value of what you do.
Ephesians 2:10 is a reminder,
“For we are God’s masterpiece, created in Christ to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.”
We are created in God’s image to walk in the goodness He has prepared. The achievements we make and the good things we do are in His strength (Philippians 4:13). The pressure we feel to be enough and do enough is lifted; the performance is canceled. This is nothing about what I can achieve, it’s Christ working in and through me.
Failed goals and unmet expectations can stay in that graveyard – it doesn’t need to have my name on it.
There is redemption in Christ Jesus. He rescues, He redeems, He lifts us out of the graves we dig for ourselves because He reigns over all other things.
When An Open Door Closes, His Grace is Sufficient
A few weeks ago, there was something I really wanted. I wrestled with it, prepared for it, thought through it. When it finally came time to do it, the opportunity passed.
I wrestle with my disappointment that it didn’t work out, and I can’t help but think it may be because I messed it up. Maybe I didn’t measure up, I didn’t pass the test, and this all but validates the lies I’ve been feeding myself, and that’s why I’m starving for fulfillment through achievement.
I failed to meet my standards.
But failing myself does not mean I failed God or messed up His plans.
His ways are good.
His timing is perfect.
His grace is sufficient.
His grip on my life is not fragile – it is the grasp of a treasured possession because I am His creation.
When disappointment strikes, it doesn’t have to debilitate. Our moments of “failure” are only but a small montage of our short life on earth.
Our purpose is eternal.
Our value is secured.
We are children of God – loved, known, and cherished by the King – accepted fully, even in our unmet expectations.
One Comment
Karan Wingate
Sounds like you were raised by me. This is me!