Little Wren Writes

I’ve noticed that disappointment rarely arrives all at once. It doesn’t usually crash into our lives like grief. It doesn’t demand our attention like fear. It arrives more quietly than that. It settles into the small gap between what we hoped would happen and what actually did.

Sometimes it’s obvious…
The job you didn’t get.
The relationship that ended.
The prayer that still feels unanswered.
The phone call that never came.

Sometimes it’s almost invisible.
The birthday that didn’t feel like you imagined.
The conversation that left you misunderstood.
The friend who slowly drifted away.
The version of yourself you thought you’d be by now.

Disappointment has a thousand different faces. Most of them look remarkably ordinary. I wonder if that’s why we don’t often talk about it. Grief feels significant enough to acknowledge. Fear is dramatic enough to recognise. But disappointment? It can feel almost embarrassing. As though we’re making too much of something too small. So we quietly carry it instead.

I’ve realised that disappointment has a subtle way of changing how I see the world. Not overnight. Slowly. Almost subtly.

After enough disappointments, I think we can begin protecting ourselves – we stop getting our hopes up. We stop expecting too much. We lower our expectations just enough that life can’t hurt us quite so badly.

It sounds wise. It even sounds mature. But I’m not convinced it is. Because I’ve noticed something else.

When we stop expecting disappointment we often stop noticing delight.

The two seem strangely connected.
Disappointment narrows our vision. Delight widens it.

I wonder if children understand delight better than adults. Not because they have easier lives. Children experience disappointment too. Friendships break. Pets die. Dreams fall apart. They don’t pull the rare shiny Pokemon card they’d saved their money for.

But they also have this remarkable ability to become completely captivated by tiny things!

A ladybird.
A rainbow.
A puddle.
A balloon escaping into the sky.
A funny-shaped cloud.

They notice things most adults walk straight past. Somewhere along the way, we become efficient. Productive. Busy. And in becoming so very grown up, we accidentally stop paying attention. Perhaps delight isn’t something children have that adults lose. Perhaps it’s something adults forget to practise.

I think I’ve often tried to find delight in things but have had people dismiss it as ‘childish’. Delight in rainbows. In little trinkets. In funny shaped food. In the boom of a firework. I then shrink away from expressing delight out of fear of judgement. I am an adult so I must ‘be an adult’ and ‘act like an adult’. What if we gave ourselves permission to really, truly, deeply delight? In anything? Big or small! Let yourself delight in the shimmering spiderweb on a cold wet morning. Let yourself delight over a perfectly aligned spreadsheet at work. Let yourself delight over a warm cinnamon donut…or two.

I could list a million little things to delight in. In fact, if you ever have the chance, I strongly recommend watching the play ‘Every Brilliant Thing’. It is all about this sort of stuff and will probably be my most favourite plays that I’ll ever watch.

But, enough of my rambling – let’s keep moving.

As is normal, I’ve been thinking about Jesus. He was, without question, the most realistic person who has ever lived.

He knew suffering was coming.
He knew betrayal.
He knew injustice.
He knew the cross.

And yet He seemed astonishingly attentive to delight.

He noticed birds. Wildflowers. Children laughing. Wedding feasts. Bread being broken. Fishing boats. Seeds disappearing into the ground. He never seemed too busy to notice ordinary beauty. I don’t think that was accidental. I think delight was part of how He lived.

The older I get, the more convinced I become that delight is not the same as happiness.

Happiness depends on circumstances. Delight depends on attention. You can be deeply sad and still experience delight.

I’ve seen it happen at funerals. Someone tells a funny story. The room fills with laughter. Nobody has forgotten why they’re there. Grief hasn’t disappeared. But delight quietly slips into the room and sits beside it.

The two don’t cancel each other out. They make space for each other.

The same is true of disappointment. It doesn’t disappear simply because something beautiful happens. Instead, delight reminds us that disappointment never tells the whole story.

I’ve had seasons where life felt overwhelmingly heavy. Like, all consuming. And yet, when I look back, I rarely remember only the hard things.

I remember the friend who arrived with cake and didn’t ask me to pretend I was okay. The unexpected text from a friend at just the right time. The cup of tea placed in my hands (with the right amount of sugar) before I’d even asked. The sunset that somehow seemed brighter because everything else felt dark. Sitting on a lounge with a friend, and in between sobs of deep sadness, giggling over cats at the window or her husband singing from the other room – tears of intense despair with sounds of sweet delight.

None of those moments solved anything. But they reminded me that grace often arrives quietly. Almost shyly. Never demanding attention. Simply waiting to be noticed.

I think that’s one of the reasons Scripture keeps inviting us to remember. Again and again, God tells His people,

“Remember what I have done.”

Not because He forgets. But because we do.

We forget His faithfulness. We forget His provision. We forget that joy has visited us before.

Memory becomes a way of noticing delight all over again. Perhaps that’s why gratitude changes us. Not because it ignores disappointment. But because it refuses to let disappointment become the only story we tell.

These days, I’m trying to become the sort of person who notices delight before rushing past it.

The first sip of tea.
The smell of rain.
The sound of children laughing.
A friend’s terrible joke.
Fresh sheets.
The sun shining on my new rug.

None of these things are extraordinary. That’s precisely the point. Grace rarely shouts. It usually whispers.

Perhaps delight isn’t the reward for people whose lives have gone according to plan. Perhaps delight is God’s quiet gift to people whose plans have fallen apart.

And perhaps the invitation isn’t to chase delight.
It’s simply to slow down long enough to notice that it has been there all along.

“This is the day the Lord has made; let us rejoice and be glad in it.” 
Psalm 118:24