Disillusionment

From Amelie with Love

Dear Friends,

This Sunday’s gospel reading from Luke is one of the more unsettling ones. Jesus speaks bluntly about what it costs to follow him—words about hating family, surrendering possessions, even carrying the cross. It is not the language of comfort. And yet, tucked within these verses is a gift we often overlook: the gift of disillusionment. As preacher and author Barbara Brown Taylor puts it, “Disillusionment is, literally, the loss of an illusion--about ourselves, about the world, about God.”* Painful, yes, but freeing; it strips away “the lies we have mistaken for the truth” and clears the way for what is real.

We spend so much of life carrying around pictures of how things ought to be: how relationships should work, how our bodies should behave, how the church should look, how the world should unfold. When reality does not match those pictures, disappointment sets in. Sometimes that disappointment is holy—it can lead us to act for justice, to advocate for fairness, to work for change. But sometimes it is simply the pain of our own expectations crumbling.

Jesus’ words invite us to notice where we cling to illusions and where we might be called to release them. Dietrich Bonhoeffer once warned that those who enter community with a “wish-dream” of what it ought to be will soon find themselves blaming others when reality does not measure up. The same could be said of faith itself. To follow Christ is not to cling to an idealized picture, but to walk with open hands and an open heart, even when the path takes turns we did not expect.

For me, this rings true in my own journey of late. These months of medical leave and recovery have not gone the way I pictured. My “oughts” and “shoulds” have had to give way to what is. And yet, in that dis-illusionment, I have also found a surprising grace--the reminder that God is present not only in what we plan, but in what we release.

Counting the cost of discipleship, as Jesus describes it, is not only about sacrifice, it is also about clearing space. When we relinquish the illusions that bind us, we make room for something deeper: love that expands beyond our tribe, strength that arises in weakness, hope that outlives disappointment.

One thing I’m learning at this point in my journey is this: we’re not asked to follow Jesus casually, as long as it feels good. We are invited into a deeper bond--closer than family, steadier than circumstance, freer than the pictures we hold of how life ought to be. That is the gift of disillusionment: not despair, but clarity, the space to receive what God is truly offering.

As we continue to walk this road together, may we have courage to let go of the “wish-dreams” that no longer serve us and to trust that God’s love will meet us, again and again, on the real ground of our lives.

With love and gratitude,

Amelie+

*Barbara Brown Taylor, God in Pain: Teaching Sermons on Suffering (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1998), 20.