Great Expectations

I’ve thought a lot about expectations today. Expectations that people have for us and expectations that I’ve had for myself. People have just expected us to have kids and probably still do. People may expect us to adopt now. I’ve lived a lot of my life in expectations – people expected me to be good at basketball b/c I was tall – little did they know I had to quit b/c of a heart condition. People expected me to get my master’s in social work and have a big social work job, but I didn’t and don’t b/c I want to focus on our lifestyle in youth ministry. People expect us to automatically find other options for children since one option was taken away. I struggle with expectations.

I’ve had expectations for myself. We expected to live in our house for less than 5 years and then find something else. I kind of expected my heart condition to go away. I expected we would have our own kids someday. I expected that the whole heart thing would get easier. None of that has happened. In fact quite the opposite. We refinanced to a 30 year mortgage on our house earlier this year b/c we think we will stay here for awhile – we have no need to move, though our house is small. My heart condition is getting worse. We will not be having our own children. And over the years, my heart situation has become harder to deal with. All of these Dan and I just were not expecting.

I’ve been thinking if expectations are what really God wants for us. Everyone has expectations – but that leaves out the possibility for God. Expectations put God in a box. When expectations are made, we think or even demand them to be fulfilled. Thinking about expectations made me cry a little b/c I don’t want to live in my own or others expectations of us. What I have been expecting for our life in the area of family planning, has completely took a whirlwind of a turn. And now I have to figure out how to live life outside of that expectation of myself and for Dan and I. I need to figure out how to live my life where each day is a gift, a blessing, and not “expect” it to go one way. I feel like that’s when hurt can happen b/c it doesn’t go the way we want. Expectations are the opposite of faith for me – if I expect, I don’t use faith – I assume. Faith keeps me falling on my knees in front of God saying “I don’t know what you have in store for me, but whatever it is, I need to trust and live one day at a time.”

Today was a light bulb moment for me. I’ve realized today expectations have been holding me back in the grieving process. I still sometimes expect this all to go away. It’s not going to – I need to grieve it all. Grieve what I expected in my life and move on toward a life of complete faith. Once again, Psalm 121 comes to mind and the words in that Psalm are exactly what I need to hear today!