Perhaps something worse than working our way through unfigured-out dreams and impostor syndrome is having our seemingly figured-out dreams crushed. Especially the ones we’ve worked our butts off for. The result here is disappointment, which can be debilitating. Disappointment can create additional obstacles like doubt, discouragement, anxiety, and frustration.
When we feel let down, or as though our plans have shattered, getting back up can be as hard as trying to clear a hurdle with a bum ankle. Personally, when some aspect of my life doesn’t work out according to plan, I tend to stress out, and at times I’ve let failure and disappointment sideline me instead of firing me up to get back in the game.
This is kind of how my husband and I felt when we thought we had a plan when we were dating in college. We were convinced Matt’s football platform would be key to living out our purpose. But when that platform disappeared, which initially felt like a major setback, we learned some super valuable life lessons that I’m going to share with you.
First, I’ll give you a little context. Matt and I met at Indiana University when he was a junior and I was a sophomore, right around the time I joined AOII. Originally from Arizona, he came all the way to good ole Indiana because of a football scholarship. Although he was a devilishly handsome, insanely talented athlete, I was floored by his humility, faith, and breadth of wisdom.
We were neighbors on campus and had mutual friends, and we met on a Wednesday night in November. We sat on the old hand-me-down couch inside apartment E3 and talked for hours, telling stories about our families, discovering beliefs and interests we had in common, and sharing our dreams for the future.
To this day, we say it was as if our hearts were old friends even though we were meeting for the very first time. During that conversation Matt mentioned he had dreams of playing in the National Football League after graduation.
“Oh, cool,” I said casually with a shoulder shrug, trying not to come off like a fan girl.
After that first meeting Matt asked me on an official date, and over time our relationship became more and more serious. I always loved wearing his practice jersey on game day. It was like a privilege to me to walk around campus and represent Matt Dooley, number 91, with pride.
The longer we dated, the more I was exposed to the life of an athlete: practices at five in the morning, two-a-days (practice twice a day), agents, contracts, drug tests, playbooks, film, more film, special diets, and more. As we began to talk about marriage and as he trained for the upcoming draft, I realized his pursuit of the NFL dream would inevitably be part of our journey together.
A part of me found the opportunity exciting. It was fun to cheer him on from the sidelines, help him decide on the best agent, and be part of the preparation and process. On the other hand, I found it all a little nerve racking. This wasn’t one of those situations where a clear plan was possible. We had endless unknowns and possibilities and very few certainties.
Still, we had so much hope that it would work out the way we wanted. Several NFL scouts complimented Matt at his pro day, and he was nationally ranked among the top five in his class at his position. On top of that, his agent seemed sure he would be a shoo-in.
I should probably mention that when pursuing something like the NFL, a man must put nearly all his eggs in one basket. Any wise adviser will tell you that’s never a smart move in life, but when it comes to something as big and elite as the NFL, you can’t afford to give it only 75 percent of your focus. Unlike other college seniors, you can’t be spending time looking for a backup job. You’ve got to be zeroed in. It’s all or nothing.
The spring before draft day, Matt left campus and moved to a nearby city to train full time for six weeks. One time when I visited him, he showed me the fancy big facility where he trained each day. Then he introduced me to the guys he was working with—some of whom went on to become first- and second-round draft picks.
It was all so exciting, so elite.
Draft day rolled around, and we invited a bunch of friends over for a little party. We wanted to celebrate with our people when Matt got the call!
Since he was a long snapper, a specialist position, Matt expected to be signed as a free agent. A free agent is an undrafted player that teams choose as soon as the seven draft rounds end. Based on what pros in the league had told him, teams would start to call just a few minutes after the seventh round ended. Matt would have to pick the team where he had the greatest shot at beating out the veteran long snapper and therefore making the final roster in the fall.
He asked me to be with him when the calls came in so I could jot down notes for him to relay to his agent before making a final decision. We were ready. While our friends waited in the living room, I sat with Matt, holding the special pad of paper and pen for this very moment. He sat with his hands folded, anxiously picking at his thumbnail, eagerly waiting for the phone to ring. We were so excited for the next step in our journey to reveal itself.
Five minutes passed, and the only sound in the hollow air was the ticking of the wall clock. No sweat, right?
Ten minutes passed. Maybe they’re just busy?
Fifteen minutes. His agent called. The Minnesota Vikings had called to express interest but made no offer. A good sign but not quite what we need.
Twenty-five minutes passed. Can they get through? Maybe we don’t have good cell service?
Thirty long minutes. Still nothing.
Forty minutes. His brow furrowed, Matt started to sweat, saying, “Something’s wrong! This is taking too long!”
The minutes dragged on, and each one seemed longer than the last.
Text messages poured in from family and friends: “Anything yet?” and “Where are you heading, Matt?”
Forty-five minutes passed. Other free agents and draft picks started announcing their new homes online. One friend was heading to Atlanta, and another was packing his bags for Kansas City.
At the one-hour mark, the phone was still silent. We walked into the living room to see our friends, who were still anticipating good news and ready to celebrate. Their expressions changed the moment they saw the disappointment on our faces. It didn’t make any sense. Matt’s agent didn’t have any answers either. He seemed just as confused as we were.
We tried to piece it together, but we couldn’t come up with an answer. We were stuck—and without a backup plan.
It was no easy thing to witness the love of my life’s plans and perceived purpose seem to evaporate before his eyes. That day I felt the sting for Matt—the sting of disappointment that comes with broken dreams and shattered plans, especially without an explanation. And honestly, it stung me too. Even though I wasn’t the one on the field, it felt as though we’d been chasing that dream together with how involved I’d been and how much we’d planned a future together.
Maybe you’ve experienced deep disappointment or put years of work toward a big dream only to fail. Maybe you’ve been laid flat on your back or seen the opportunity you’ve worked so hard for stolen from you without reason. Maybe plans you made or a purpose you thought was certain shattered within seconds, and you couldn’t understand why.
That confusing, disappointing night, Matt held it together. I, on the other hand, cried my eyes out. I was so ready for him to take that next step, to start living what we thought was the next piece of the purpose puzzle. Instead, it felt as though our whole plan had crumbled into a messy heap of missed opportunities and misplaced dreams. I hurt for him. I hurt for us. I ached with disappointment and felt anxious for answers.
What do you do when everything you thought you wanted crumbles? When your dreams now seem out of reach and the purpose you thought was yours is completely obscured?
Maybe you do what I do: search for answers. Isn’t that what we all do? Crave reasons, explanations, and direction?
Why did this happen?
What should I do next?
How can I fix this?
When we don’t get those answers right away, it hurts, and sometimes it hinders our steps forward. We long for clarity, but perhaps true purpose requires closeness with God. When I get impatient, however, I trade closeness for clarity, just when He’s daring me to press in and trust there’s a bigger plan.
By that fall Matt had some tryouts, but he still hadn’t been signed. Hope was dwindling, and he began to search for an entry-level job since it didn’t look as if he’d be getting called anytime soon.
Later that year, while working for a medical device company, he got a call out of the blue. The Pittsburgh Steelers were bringing him in for a workout. We were excited, but we didn’t tell anyone. We didn’t want to get our families’ and friends’ hopes up only to have to break disappointing news again. But after Matt’s workout it happened.
They signed him! I squealed and jumped up and down when he called to tell me, because I couldn’t contain my excitement. He had finally made it! He was added to the preseason roster and given the number 42 jersey. It was official.
We’d been engaged for almost six months at that point, and we’d changed our wedding date multiple times because of his ever-fluctuating career plans. Now, finally, the year of uncertainty was coming to an end. It was happening. The dream was coming true! Or so we thought.
Throughout the spring and summer months, Matt lived in Pittsburgh, training and practicing, working hard to secure a spot on the final roster. I lived with my parents and planned our wedding, now scheduled for Labor Day weekend—close, we soon found out, to when teams make final roster cuts. But it was too late to change the wedding date again. Nope, that wasn’t stressful at all. (That’s a lie.)
I believe I prayed harder in those few months than I ever had in my whole life, clinging to the hope that Matt would make it, that he’d still have a job in the NFL when we got married.
I know you might be thinking, What’s the big deal? Even if he got cut, didn’t he make like a kajillion dollars when he signed? Pause right there, sister, because that’s not at all the truth. Allow me to offer you a peek behind the curtain. What most people don’t realize about NFL free agents is that most of them don’t make their “big money” salary until they’re added to the final roster. Until the preseason ends and the season starts, they don’t earn much. We still laugh at the fact that Matt took a pay cut to sign with the Steelers. As a free agent rookie, he didn’t have a signing bonus and his weekly stipend was barely enough to cover his bills. I was working part time but hadn’t started a full-time career because we hoped I would be moving to Pittsburgh with him in the fall.
My income wasn’t enough to support both of us, and he didn’t have savings to get us through if he was released from the team. We had no plan B. Our livelihood was dependent on him surviving all the rounds of cuts he would face in August. One morning just thirteen days before the wedding day, Mom and I were reviewing RSVPs when my phone chimed, notifying me of a text message. I expected a “good morning” from my Steeler, just as I got every morning.
After I grabbed the phone, I saw three little words that changed everything. Three words that made my heart sink. Three words I never wanted to read: “Just got released.”
That’s it. That’s all he said. I didn’t know whether to cry or curl up in a ball or both. Crushed dreams, round number two.
I was worried. I was upset. And again I wanted answers I knew I’d probably never get. Why did this happen after he had worked so hard? Why did his efforts keep ending in disappointment?
We were getting married in thirteen days, and we didn’t know where we’d live, where we’d be working, or how we’d make ends meet. Great.
How do you move forward when you get the news you prayed against? When plan A crumbles and you have no plan B? When you’re about to step into a new season of life with zero sense of security and no idea what will happen next?
A couple of weeks later, we said our vows in a tiny white chapel and walked back down the aisle as husband and wife, without a plan beyond that day. As family and friends threw rice in our hair and we stepped into the old Studebaker getaway car, I had this overwhelming feeling of excitement that comes when you say yes to someone or something you love before anything else is figured out.
And I learned that big steps forward before you figure it all out are simple, terrifying, and beautiful all at once. Perhaps a little risk like that is what makes life so fun, so worth living, after all.
In those first few months, we fumbled our way through the most insecure season of our lives, longing for answers but often left with uncertainty. I began to wonder if maybe God doesn’t give us answers because He dares us to spend less time trying to figure out what we’re doing and more time having faith in what He’s doing. Perhaps the broken pieces that come with disappointment, frustration, and failure prepare us for a purpose we couldn’t have dreamed up on our own. Maybe they’re the very things we need.
Not long ago, I received a text message that rocked me to the core: “The most important lessons are the hardest to learn.”
I hadn’t heard something truer in a long time. The most important lessons are the ones we can’t afford to miss, the ones we learn in the most challenging, disappointing, or downright discouraging situations in life. Our pursuit of the NFL didn’t go the way we planned or hoped, but that doesn’t mean that our life turned out any less wonderful or that it lacked the purpose it would have had if this dream had worked out long term.
Those uncertain years held a lot of frustration, but they also taught me so much about living a meaningful (not just happy or comfortable) life. If you feel as if shattered plans, broken dreams, failures, or disappointments have robbed you of your purpose, may I take your hand and whisper a couple of crucial lessons I had to learn?
Sure, we didn’t make enough money to support ourselves from Matt’s short-lived NFL career, there were often more disappointments than dreams come true, and he certainly didn’t get as far as he would have liked. However, we had to stop saying it didn’t work out…because it actually did. We had to shift our entire mind-set from “that was a bummer” to “that was a blessing” as we realized that it did, in fact, work out exactly how it was supposed to, even if it wasn’t how we wanted it to.
Did we have to take time to process the disappointment? Of course. There’s wisdom in allowing yourself to feel what you’re feeling. But if you look at every disappointment in life as an obstacle instead of an opportunity, you will become a wallower. Wallowers get swallowed up by life instead of making the most of life.
I often remember what my dad always said when I needed to tackle something with wisdom instead of whining when I was growing up: “We’re not raising wimps over here!”
It may sound a little harsh, but my dad is a jovial kind of guy. He says everything with a big grin and a positive attitude. So when he reminds me that he didn’t raise me to be a wimp, that doesn’t mean he raised me not to feel or struggle. He’s always given me room to process emotions and wrestle through life. But that’s just it—he’s given me room to wrestle with life but never encouraged me to back down and let life’s challenges win. When he reminds me that I’m no wimp, he’s reminding me that I don’t have to give life’s disappointments the power to beat me up. I can’t always avoid getting punched by life, but I can decide if I’ll punch back with purpose. And so can you.
When it came to the ups and downs of the NFL, so many people told us to “just trust the process; it’ll work out.” But when the process didn’t work out and proved to be completely unreliable, Matt and I learned we had to stop trusting the NFL, or whatever dream we might have had, because that is a weak god that will let us down ten times out of ten. We had to stop trusting the process because the process is full of potholes and pitfalls. We had to instead start trusting God in the process.
Worry and insecurity lose their grip when I come to grips with the fact that I’m not in control (no matter how many prayers I pray) and that I can’t trust anything outside of God. I cannot control what happens to me. I can only choose how I respond to what happens. The same goes for you. The only thing you can control is your response when your best-laid plans crumble. You can choose to place your faith in the unsteady process or trust that a bigger purpose will always break through your plans when God has something so much better for you.
And, hey, maybe things go wrong so God can set us right.
For a little while, Matt and I thought the NFL was going to be our platform, but when that platform crumbled, we realized a few things. The first was that we already had a platform in our small spheres of influence, even if it wasn’t on a big stage. The second was that we don’t need a big platform to live our purpose (and honestly, how prideful that kind of thinking is).
If we have one, great, but that’s not where our purpose is found. Instead, we just need to love people. Purpose lies in how we show up in our spheres of influence and how people are loved by us. No platform is required for that. No big name, fancy organization, or impressive job is necessary. Showing up can be done by both the broke college student and the established entrepreneur. Instead of trying to show off, each of us can choose to show up and give what we have.
Maybe we need to fail at what we think we want so we can learn to be faithful with what we already have, right where we are. Remembering this lesson helps me keep a healthy perspective on whatever influence or platform I’m given, whether it’s a local leadership position, online, or even in my small-town community.
What spheres of influence are you overlooking because you’ve been so focused on a sphere of influence you’d like to have? In other words, are you overlooking how you could make a positive impact on your next-door neighbor or your difficult in-law because you’re so focused on the influence that getting a promotion or an award might give you?
Over the course of those two years, I learned that football wasn’t the key to our purpose after all and that our purpose could not and should not be so dependent on such a temporary and unpredictable platform. Maybe that would have been one specific way to carry out our purpose, but it would not have been the purpose in and of itself.
When I get caught up in having a big platform or in feeling pressure to prove myself to people, I have to stand in front of a mirror and speak this out loud: “Focus on loving people more than on getting them to like you.”
Again, remember significance over specifics. The specific roles or platforms we have are not our significance. They are places to bring our purpose to, but they are not the point of everything.
Your purpose is not your job title or career path or any other means of influence. Those are simply avenues for living out the God-given purpose you already have.
Sister, disappointment will crush the determination and drive right out of you if you are not grateful for the experience it gave you. Grumbling will turn a letdown into a lockdown on your life. That’s when you’ll feel stuck. That’s where I’ve gotten stuck before. On the flip side, gratitude can turn a letdown into a lesson that redirects the trajectory of your life from what you thought you wanted to what you’re actually made for.
I don’t know about you, but I don’t want to be the girl who lets setbacks hold me back. I want to be the kind of woman who looks the fattest disappointments in the face and says, You don’t scare me. I’m thankful for you because you will be a lesson that will shape me into who I’ll become.
I think we live in a world full of people who are so afraid to miss out on something else that they completely miss out on where they actually are. FOMO is an acronym that stands for “fear of missing out,” and it is a real problem. Everywhere I look, I see young people overcommitting themselves and obsessing over a perceived notion that they’re somehow missing out on life if they don’t go to a specific place or attend a certain social function. My brother and I were recently discussing this phenomenon, and he shared what he’d observed among peers. We talked about how it seems like so many people are dissatisfied with where they are because they’re chasing after some experience they see others doing online.
Then he shook his head and said, “The carrot is a hologram.”
Holy cow. He was right. It looks so real, doesn’t it? The promise that if you just move to that hip big city in your twenties, or get that job you’ve been working toward, or take that cool photo to post on Instagram and prove you’re relevant, you’ll be satisfied.
The second you grab that carrot dangling in front of you—make that move, get that job, or post the cool photo—there’s no lasting satisfaction. You immediately move on to the next thing you think you’re missing out on. And it never stops. The carrot is a false promise of fulfillment. It’s nothing more than a hologram. Are you still believing that your dream come true will be the only thing that fills you up or that figuring out your next step will reveal your hidden purpose?
It’s one thing to set goals and be diligent and intentional as we work toward them in the here and now. However, we have to keep ourselves in check because living with a fear of what we’re missing out on rather than focusing on what we’re currently standing on top of is toxic to our joy, our confidence, and the impact we can have right where we are.
Know what else that kind of thinking does? It sets us up to get stuck in disappointment instead of stepping forward in important directions.
When I look back at our challenging yet refining first year of marriage, I’m thankful we didn’t get everything we wanted. I also realize we didn’t miss out on anything we weren’t meant to have in the first place. Had our plans gone how we initially hoped, we likely wouldn’t have moved back to Matt’s hometown and been able to spend what ended up being the last few months of his Pop-Pop’s life with him. Sure, that didn’t look glamorous, but guess what? Sometimes the glamorous things we go after are the most unimportant. On the flip side, sometimes the most unglamorous things we do are the most important.
On that same note, if Matt would have made the final roster that year, I might not be writing this book. It’s probably not something I would have thought to pursue. If we hadn’t been disappointed in that season, we wouldn’t have discovered all the dreams we didn’t even realize we had for this season.
Perhaps even more important, we might not have learned on such a personal level what it looks like to embrace the power of impact in unseen spaces and ordinary places. It’s easy to embrace impact that is seen and applauded on big stages, but maybe the goodness is truly in the ordinary everyday.
Now whenever I catch myself feeling the pressure to do what looks impressive or am caught up in the lie that I’m somehow missing out on something, I have to center myself, check my heart, and honestly answer this question: Am I overlooking something right under my nose because I’m so preoccupied with the notion that I’m missing out?
I dare you to do the same. Maybe you haven’t missed out on what really matters at all. Maybe that thing you thought you wanted is not a broken dream but a step toward a much bigger one.
Don’t overlook what’s in front of you because you’re so fixated on what’s behind you. I’m serious. There is no room for FOMO because the fear of missing out is just a perception, not a reality. If your plans didn’t work out, there is a reason. You’ve just got to keep your eyes open wide enough to see that something new is being worked out in your life.
So if you feel as if you really messed up or missed out on your one big opportunity, please reevaluate. Get your eyes off what didn’t go right and refocus for five seconds. Don’t overlook the purpose and opportunity right in front of you. Get back to what really matters, not what you think you missed out on.
Because, honestly, what does a gal really gain when she gets the whole world but loses her soul?1