It's Not Supposed to Be This Way Quotes

“Sometimes to get your life back, you have to face the death of what you thought your life would look like.”
― Lysa TerKeurst, It's Not Supposed to Be This Way: Finding Unexpected Strength When Disappointments Leave You Shattered

“...These seasons of suffering are not for nothing. They will grow you. They will shape you. They will soften you. They will allow you to experience God's comfort and compassion. But you will find life-giving purpose and meaning when you allow God to take your painful experiences and comfort others. You will be able to share a unique hope because you know exactly what it feels like to be them.”
― Lysa TerKeurst, It's Not Supposed to Be This Way: Finding Unexpected Strength When Disappointments Leave You Shattered

“What if disappointment is really the exact appointment your soul needs to radically encounter God?”
― Lysa TerKeurst, It's Not Supposed to Be This Way: Finding Unexpected Strength When Disappointments Leave You Shattered

“To trust God is to trust His timing. To trust God is to trust His way. God loves me too much to answer my prayers at any other time than the right time and in any other way than the right way. In the quietness of all that doesn't feel right, this truth does.”
― Lysa TerKeurst, It's Not Supposed to Be This Way: Finding Unexpected Strength When Disappointments Leave You Shattered

“Humans are very attached to outcomes. We say we trust God but behind the scenes we work our fingers to the bone and our emotions into a tangled fray trying to control our outcomes. We praise God when our normal looks like what we thought it would. We question God when it doesn’t. And walk away from Him when we have a sinking suspicion that God is the one who set fire to the hope that was holding us together.”
― Lysa TerKeurst, It's Not Supposed to Be This Way: Finding Unexpected Strength When Disappointments Leave You Shattered

“God doesn’t want you or me to suffer. But He will allow it in doses to increase our trust. Our pain and suffering isn’t to hurt us. It’s to save us. To save us from a life where we are self-reliant, self-satisfied, self -absorbed, and set up for the greatest pain of all . . . separation from God.”
― Lysa TerKeurst, It's Not Supposed to Be This Way: Finding Unexpected Strength When Disappointments Leave You Shattered

“As Ravi Zacharias said, “Sin will take you farther than you want to go, keep you longer than you want to stay, and cost you more than you want to pay.”
― Lysa TerKeurst, It's Not Supposed to Be This Way: Finding Unexpected Strength When Disappointments Leave You Shattered

“Feeling the pain is the first step toward healing the pain. The longer we avoid the feeling, the more we delay our healing. We can numb it, ignore it, or pretend it doesn’t exist, but all those options lead to an eventual breakdown, not a breakthrough.”
― Lysa TerKeurst, It's Not Supposed to Be This Way: Finding Unexpected Strength When Disappointments Leave You Shattered

“God’s Word is the Truth. And His Truth says you are a holy and dearly loved child of your heavenly Father. You are wonderfully made. You are a treasure. You are beautiful. You are fully known by Him and lavishly loved by Him. You are chosen. You are special. You are set apart. No matter what you’ve done or what’s been done to you, these words of God are true about you.”
― Lysa TerKeurst, It's Not Supposed to Be This Way: Finding Unexpected Strength When Disappointments Leave You Shattered

“If the enemy can isolate us, he can influence us. And his favorite entry point of all is through our disappointments”
― Lysa TerKeurst, It's Not Supposed to Be This Way: Finding Unexpected Strength When Disappointments Leave You Shattered

“When my brain begs me to doubt God, as it most certainly does, I find relief for my unbelief by laying down my human assessments and assumptions; I turn from the Tree of Knowledge and fix my gaze on the Tree of Life.”
― Lysa TerKeurst, It's Not Supposed to Be This Way: Finding Unexpected Strength When Disappointments Leave You Shattered

“The enemy of my soul didn't want me painting that day. To create meant that I would look a little bit like my Creator. To overcome the terrifying angst of the blank canvas meant I would forever have more compassion for other artists. You better believe as I placed the first blue and gray strokes onto the white emptiness before me, the "not good enough" statement was pulsing through my head in almost deafening tones...
This parlaying lie is one of his favorite tactics to keep you disillusioned by disappointments. Walls go up, emotions run high, we get guarded, defensive, demotivated, and paralyzed by the endless ways we feel doomed to fail. This is when we quit. This is when we settle for the ease of facebook.... This is when we get a job to simply make money instead of pursuing our calling to make a difference. This is when we put the paintbrush down and don't even try.
So there I was. Standing before my painted blue boat, making a choice of which voice to listen to.
I'm convinced God was smiling. Pleased. Asking me to find delight in what is right. Wanting me to have compassion for myself by focusing on that part of my painting that expressed something beautiful. To just be eager to give that beauty to whoever dared to look at my boat. To create to love others. Not to beg them for validation.
But the enemy was perverting all that. Perfection mocked my boat. The bow was too high, the details too elementary, the reflection on the water too abrupt, and the back of the boat too off-center. Disappointment demanded I hyper-focused on what didn't look quite right.
It was my choice which narrative to hold on to: "Not good enough" or "Find delight in what is right." Each perspective swirled, begging me to declare it as truth.
I was struggling to make peace with my painting creation, because I was struggling to make make peace with myself as God's creation. Anytime we feel not good enough we deny the powerful truth that we are a glorious work of God in progress.
We are imperfect because we are unfinished.
So, as unfinished creations, of course everything we attempt will have imperfections. Everything we accomplish will have imperfections. And that's when it hit me: I expect a perfection in me and in others that not even God Himself expects. If God is patient with the process, why can't I be?
How many times have I let imperfections cause me to be too hard on myself and too harsh with others?
I force myself to send a picture of my boat to at least 20 friends. I was determined to not not be held back by the enemy's accusations that my artwork wasn't good enough to be considered "real art". This wasn't for validation but rather confirmation that I could see the imperfections in my painting but not deem it worthless. I could see the imperfections in me and not deem myself worthless. It was an act of self-compassion.

I now knew to stand before each painting with nothing but love, amazement, and delight. I refused to demand anything more from the artist. I just wanted to show up for every single piece she was so brave to put on display..
Might I just be courageous enough to stand before her work and require myself to find everything about it I love? Release my clenched fist and pouty disappointments, and trade my "live up" mentality for a "show up" one? It is so much more freeing to simply show up and be a finder of the good. Break from the secret disappointments. Let my brain venture down the tiny little opening of love..

And I realized what makes paintings so delightful. It's there imperfections. That's what makes it art. It's been touched by a human. It's been created by someone whose hands sweat and who can't possibly transfer divine perfection from what her eyes see to what her fingertips can create. It will be flawed.”
― Lysa TerKeurst, It's Not Supposed to Be This Way: Finding Unexpected Strength When Disappointments Leave You Shattered

“Weak moments don’t make weak faith. Weak moments make us even more aware of our need to press in to faith.”
― Lysa TerKeurst, It's Not Supposed to Be This Way: Finding Unexpected Strength When Disappointments Leave You Shattered

“God won’t give you more than you can handle.” But that’s not actually in the Bible. God does say He won’t allow us to be tempted beyond what we can bear and that He always provides a way out (1 Corinthians 10:13). But that’s not the same as God not giving us more than we can handle. He sometimes will allow more and more and more.”
― Lysa TerKeurst, It's Not Supposed to Be This Way: Finding Unexpected Strength When Disappointments Leave You Shattered

“And let's be honest, if we weren't ever disappointed, we'd settle for the shallow pleasures of this world rather than addressing the spiritual desperation of our souls. We don't think about fixing things until we realize they are broken. And even then we don't call in the experts until we surrender to the realization we cannot fix things on our own. If our souls never ached with disappointments and disillusionment, we'd never full admit and submit to our need for God. If we weren't shattered we'd never know the glorious touch of the Potter making something glorious out of dust, out of us.”
― Lysa TerKeurst, It's Not Supposed to Be This Way: Finding Unexpected Strength When Disappointments Leave You Shattered

“We think we want comfort in the I-don't-know times of life. But comfort isn't a solution to seek; rather, it's a by-product we'll reap when we stay close to the Lord. What if the comfort and certainties we crave today are a deadly recipe for complacency that will draw our hearts further and further away from God?”
― Lysa TerKeurst, It's Not Supposed to Be This Way: Finding Unexpected Strength When Disappointments Leave You Shattered

“I have honest feelings where I want to throw my hands up in utter frustration and yell about the unfairness of it all. To deny my feelings any voice is to rob me of being human. But to let my feelings be the only voice will rob my soul of healing perspectives with which God wants to comfort me and carry me forward. My feelings and my faith will almost certainly come into conflict with each other. My feelings see rotten situations as absolutely unnecessary hurt that stinks. My soul sees it as fertilizer for a better future. Both these perspectives are real. And they yank me in different directions with never-ending wrestling. To wrestle well means acknowledging my feelings but moving forward, letting my faith lead the way.”
― Lysa TerKeurst, It's Not Supposed to Be This Way: Finding Unexpected Strength When Disappointments Leave You Shattered

“The human heart was created in the context of the perfection of the garden of Eden. But we don’t live there now.
This is why our instincts keep firing off the lie that perfection is possible. We have pictures of perfection etched into the very DNA of our souls.
We chase it. We angle our cameras trying to catch it. We take twenty shots hoping to find it. And then even our good photos have to be color corrected, filtered, and cropped.
We do our very best to make others think this posted picture is the real deal. But we all know the truth. We all see the charade. We all know the emperor is naked. But there we are, clapping on the sidelines, following along, playing the game. Trying to believe that maybe, just maybe, if we get close to something that looks like perfection it will help us snag a little of its shine for ourselves.
But we know even the shiniest of things is headed in the direction of becoming dull. New will always eventually become old. Followers unfollow. People who lift us up will let us down. The most tightly knit aspects of life snag, unravel, and disintegrate before our very eyes.
And we are epically disappointed.
But we aren’t talking about it.”
― Lysa TerKeurst, It's Not Supposed to Be This Way: Finding Unexpected Strength When Disappointments Leave You Shattered

“In the quiet, unexpressed, unwrestled-through disappointments, Satan is handcrafting his most damning weapons against us and those we love. It’s his subtle seduction to get us alone with our thoughts so he can slip in whispers that will develop our disappointments into destructive choices.”
― Lysa TerKeurst, It's Not Supposed to Be This Way: Finding Unexpected Strength When Disappointments Leave You Shattered

“I know I must walk through God’s process before I see His fulfilled promise.”
― Lysa TerKeurst, It's Not Supposed to Be This Way: Finding Unexpected Strength When Disappointments Leave You Shattered

“Consider it pure joy, my brothers and sisters, whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith produces perseverance. Let perseverance finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything. (James 1:2–4)”
― Lysa TerKeurst, It's Not Supposed to Be This Way: Finding Unexpected Strength When Disappointments Leave You Shattered

“I expect a perfection in me and a perfection in others that not even God Himself expects. If God is patient with the process, why can’t I be?”
― Lysa TerKeurst, It's Not Supposed to Be This Way: Finding Unexpected Strength When Disappointments Leave You Shattered

“Hoping doesn’t mean I put myself in harm’s way. It doesn’t mean I ignore reality. No, hoping means I acknowledge reality in the very same breath that I acknowledge God’s sovereignty.”
― Lysa TerKeurst, It's Not Supposed to Be This Way: Finding Unexpected Strength When Disappointments Leave You Shattered

“Trust me, the enemy is as interested in tapping into your disappointments as he was with my friend. The enemy doesn’t take vacations, so we shouldn’t take vacations from studying God’s Word either. We wouldn’t want to go even a few hours without water, certainly not days or weeks, and we should view God’s living water for our souls in the same way. Satan isn’t intimidated by how strong we appear. He notices a thirsty soul quite parched. He’s sneaky. He’s crafty. He’s subtle in how he slithers up next to us and flashes just the right thing, at just the right time, in the moments we are unknowingly weak enough to think, Hmmm . . . that looks good. That might really satisfy me.”
― Lysa TerKeurst, It's Not Supposed to Be This Way: Finding Unexpected Strength When Disappointments Leave You Shattered

“Why did this happen? Because there’s someone else in the world who would drown in their own tears if not for seeing yours.”
― Lysa TerKeurst, It's Not Supposed to Be This Way: Finding Unexpected Strength When Disappointments Leave You Shattered

“To live is to love. To love is to risk pain. To risk pain is to live. It’s what it means to truly be human. As fragile as dust. The breaking of us. The making of us. The building up of our faith.”
― Lysa TerKeurst, It's Not Supposed to Be This Way: Finding Unexpected Strength When Disappointments Leave You Shattered

“I have to trust that first comes the dust, and then comes the making of something even better with us. God isn’t ever going to forsake you, but He will go to great lengths to remake you. What if disappointment is really the exact appointment your soul needs to radically encounter God?”
― Lysa TerKeurst, It's Not Supposed to Be This Way: Finding Unexpected Strength When Disappointments Leave You Shattered

“And we’d both agree this isn’t how it should be. This life between two gardens is confusing and complicated. Dust is messy. We don’t even like to touch dust, especially if it’s made up of the shattered pieces of our own hearts.”
― Lysa TerKeurst, It's Not Supposed to Be This Way: Finding Unexpected Strength When Disappointments Leave You Shattered

“If the enemy can isolate us, he can influence us.”
― Lysa TerKeurst, It's Not Supposed to Be This Way: Finding Unexpected Strength When Disappointments Leave You Shattered

“So the human heart was created in the context of the perfection of the garden of Eden. But we don't live there now. This is why our instincts keep firing off the lie that perfection is possible. We have pictures of perfection etched into the very DNA of our souls.”
― Lysa TerKeurst, It's Not Supposed to Be This Way: Finding Unexpected Strength When Disappointments Leave You Shattered