The Anniversary Trip We Had to Cancel Three Days Before We Left
The Anniversary Trip We Had to Cancel Three Days Before We Left
RedeemedExistence daily devotional, October 16, 2026
We had saved for almost a year, a cabin on the coast for our thirtieth anniversary, the kind of trip we always said we would take someday and never actually booked until this spring. I had the confirmation email printed and folded into my wallet like a man carrying proof of something good finally happening to him. Three days before we were supposed to leave, my wife's mother fell in her own kitchen and broke her hip, and there was no question in either of our minds about where we were going to be instead. I called the cabin and canceled it myself, standing in a hospital hallway, and the woman on the phone was kind about the refund and none of that kindness touched the particular ache of watching something I had wanted for a year disappear in a four-minute phone call.
I am seven years sober, and for a long time I thought disappointment was a small feeling, one step down from real grief and therefore not worth much attention. What that canceled trip taught me again is that disappointment has its own weight, separate from whatever caused it. It is the specific grief of a hope that had already taken root in you, already furnished itself with pictures of a beach and a quiet dinner, and then had to be dug back up before it ever bore anything. Nobody did anything wrong. Nobody was even to blame. The hope was simply taken, and I still had to grieve the particular shape of it.
Scripture does not treat that kind of grief as an overreaction. Solomon names the exact mechanism I felt standing in that hallway. "Hope deferred makes the heart sick, But when the desire comes, it is a tree of life" (Proverbs 13:12, NKJV). Heartsick, not dramatic, just an honest medical word for what a delayed hope actually does to a man. David talked to his own soul the way I have had to talk to mine more than once this week. "Why are you cast down, O my soul? And why are you disquieted within me? Hope in God, for I shall yet praise Him For the help of His countenance" (Psalm 42:5, NKJV). He asked the question before he answered it, which told me the asking itself is not a lack of faith. It is where faith usually starts.
Here is where my own reasoning has never once finished the job of comforting me. I could tell myself accurately that the trip was only a trip, that her mother's hip mattered infinitely more than a cabin on a coast, that plenty of people lose far more than a vacation. Every sentence was true, and none of it touched the actual ache, because disappointment was never a math problem to be out-argued with better perspective. It is a real loss, small next to some and still real, and reasoning can only ever shrink it by comparison. It cannot heal it.
This is exactly what abiding in the Spirit gives that my own perspective management never could. Paul does not tell the Romans to simply reframe their suffering until it stops hurting. He describes an actual process, with an actual source at the end of it. "And not only that, but we also glory in tribulations, knowing that tribulation produces perseverance; and perseverance, character; and character, hope. Now hope does not disappoint, because the love of God has been poured out in our hearts by the Holy Spirit who was given to us" (Romans 5:3-5, NKJV). Hope does not disappoint, not because the circumstances always resolve the way I wanted, but because the Spirit pours something into a heart that no canceled reservation can drain back out. God told a people who had lost far more than a vacation, an entire homeland, that His intentions toward them had not changed because their plans had. "For I know the thoughts that I think toward you, says the LORD, thoughts of peace and not of evil, to give you a future and a hope" (Jeremiah 29:11, NKJV). Paul calls the disappointment itself light and momentary, not because it feels light while you are standing inside it, but because of what it is quietly producing underneath where I cannot see. "For our light affliction, which is but for a moment, is working for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory, while we do not look at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen. For the things which are seen are temporary, but the things which are not seen are eternal" (2 Corinthians 4:17-18, NKJV). Jesus told His own disciples the night before the worst disappointment any of them would ever carry, His own death, that He was not offering them a trip that would never get canceled. He was offering something steadier than that. "These things I have spoken to you, that in Me you may have peace. In the world you will have tribulation; but be of good cheer, I have overcome the world" (John 16:33, NKJV).
My wife's mother is healing now, slower than any of us would like, and we have already talked about rebooking that cabin for the spring. I am not pretending the disappointment did not cost me anything. I am only saying it did not have the last word. God is alive tonight, and He already knows exactly which trip you canceled, which hope you had already furnished in your mind before it got dug back up unfinished. He has a plan for you that was never contingent on that reservation staying intact, and He has poured a hope into you by His own Spirit that does not run on the same calendar your disappointment does. He will never leave you standing in that hallway alone with the refund and the ache both.
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Scriptures used (NKJV): Proverbs 13:12; Psalm 42:5; Romans 5:3-5; Jeremiah 29:11; 2 Corinthians 4:17-18; John 16:33.
RedeemedExistence daily devotional, October 16, 2026
We had saved for almost a year, a cabin on the coast for our thirtieth anniversary, the kind of trip we always said we would take someday and never actually booked until this spring. I had the confirmation email printed and folded into my wallet like a man carrying proof of something good finally happening to him. Three days before we were supposed to leave, my wife's mother fell in her own kitchen and broke her hip, and there was no question in either of our minds about where we were going to be instead. I called the cabin and canceled it myself, standing in a hospital hallway, and the woman on the phone was kind about the refund and none of that kindness touched the particular ache of watching something I had wanted for a year disappear in a four-minute phone call.
I am seven years sober, and for a long time I thought disappointment was a small feeling, one step down from real grief and therefore not worth much attention. What that canceled trip taught me again is that disappointment has its own weight, separate from whatever caused it. It is the specific grief of a hope that had already taken root in you, already furnished itself with pictures of a beach and a quiet dinner, and then had to be dug back up before it ever bore anything. Nobody did anything wrong. Nobody was even to blame. The hope was simply taken, and I still had to grieve the particular shape of it.
Scripture does not treat that kind of grief as an overreaction. Solomon names the exact mechanism I felt standing in that hallway. "Hope deferred makes the heart sick, But when the desire comes, it is a tree of life" (Proverbs 13:12, NKJV). Heartsick, not dramatic, just an honest medical word for what a delayed hope actually does to a man. David talked to his own soul the way I have had to talk to mine more than once this week. "Why are you cast down, O my soul? And why are you disquieted within me? Hope in God, for I shall yet praise Him For the help of His countenance" (Psalm 42:5, NKJV). He asked the question before he answered it, which told me the asking itself is not a lack of faith. It is where faith usually starts.
Here is where my own reasoning has never once finished the job of comforting me. I could tell myself accurately that the trip was only a trip, that her mother's hip mattered infinitely more than a cabin on a coast, that plenty of people lose far more than a vacation. Every sentence was true, and none of it touched the actual ache, because disappointment was never a math problem to be out-argued with better perspective. It is a real loss, small next to some and still real, and reasoning can only ever shrink it by comparison. It cannot heal it.
This is exactly what abiding in the Spirit gives that my own perspective management never could. Paul does not tell the Romans to simply reframe their suffering until it stops hurting. He describes an actual process, with an actual source at the end of it. "And not only that, but we also glory in tribulations, knowing that tribulation produces perseverance; and perseverance, character; and character, hope. Now hope does not disappoint, because the love of God has been poured out in our hearts by the Holy Spirit who was given to us" (Romans 5:3-5, NKJV). Hope does not disappoint, not because the circumstances always resolve the way I wanted, but because the Spirit pours something into a heart that no canceled reservation can drain back out. God told a people who had lost far more than a vacation, an entire homeland, that His intentions toward them had not changed because their plans had. "For I know the thoughts that I think toward you, says the LORD, thoughts of peace and not of evil, to give you a future and a hope" (Jeremiah 29:11, NKJV). Paul calls the disappointment itself light and momentary, not because it feels light while you are standing inside it, but because of what it is quietly producing underneath where I cannot see. "For our light affliction, which is but for a moment, is working for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory, while we do not look at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen. For the things which are seen are temporary, but the things which are not seen are eternal" (2 Corinthians 4:17-18, NKJV). Jesus told His own disciples the night before the worst disappointment any of them would ever carry, His own death, that He was not offering them a trip that would never get canceled. He was offering something steadier than that. "These things I have spoken to you, that in Me you may have peace. In the world you will have tribulation; but be of good cheer, I have overcome the world" (John 16:33, NKJV).
My wife's mother is healing now, slower than any of us would like, and we have already talked about rebooking that cabin for the spring. I am not pretending the disappointment did not cost me anything. I am only saying it did not have the last word. God is alive tonight, and He already knows exactly which trip you canceled, which hope you had already furnished in your mind before it got dug back up unfinished. He has a plan for you that was never contingent on that reservation staying intact, and He has poured a hope into you by His own Spirit that does not run on the same calendar your disappointment does. He will never leave you standing in that hallway alone with the refund and the ache both.
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Scriptures used (NKJV): Proverbs 13:12; Psalm 42:5; Romans 5:3-5; Jeremiah 29:11; 2 Corinthians 4:17-18; John 16:33.
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