I am deflated. I am really good at getting my hopes up. I easily get excited about what is ahead of me everything from the next family event, a date night with my husband to a new job, good test results, or a reconciliation. I am so good and getting my hopes up that my husband will often start what he is telling me with, “Now, don’t get your hopes up…”  It doesn’t matter. I still get my hopes up.

So what’s wrong with being hopeful? I say, “Nothing.” However, it does come with disappointment. I don’t always get what I hope for. Okay, I often don’t get what I hope for.  Generally, the ups and downs of my hopes are fleeting emotions. This time I feel like the wind has been knocked out of me. A deep desire has been taken away at least for the time being. So, do I stop getting my hopes up? Will that stop me from feeling so deflated? Will it stop heartbreak? No.

God created emotions for us to experience the fullness of life. If we take out the lows, the highs are no longer as high. I want the full rich feeling of love and joy, so that means I also have to feel the deflated, kicked in the gut feeling with the lows. Without the lows I don’t appreciate the highs. There is a time for everything.

There is a time for everything,
and a season for every activity under the heavens:
2 a time to be born and a time to die,
a time to plant and a time to uproot,
3 a time to kill and a time to heal,
a time to tear down and a time to build,
4 a time to weep and a time to laugh,
a time to mourn and a time to dance,
5 a time to scatter stones and a time to gather them,
a time to embrace and a time to refrain from embracing,
6 a time to search and a time to give up,
a time to keep and a time to throw away,
7 a time to tear and a time to mend,
a time to be silent and a time to speak,
8 a time to love and a time to hate,
a time for war and a time for peace.
9 What do workers gain from their toil? 10 I have seen the burden God has laid on the human race. 11 He has made everything beautiful in its time. He has also set eternity in the human heart; yet[a] no one can fathom what God has done from beginning to end. (Ecclesiastes 3:1-11 NIV).

This is my time to feel deflated. It is my time to feel sorrow that a dream isn’t going to realized in the way I had hoped. But, I don’t lose all hope. God will make all things beautiful in its time. This is not the time. God has a better time. Sometimes in sorrow and grief it is hard to see the hope, the better plan, but I trust my God and His good and perfect plan for me. I am nothing without hope.

How about you? How have you risen up from feeling deflated? Share your experience here and breathe hope and bring life to others.