In the last week or two I started to notice that a joy leak had sprung up in my heart; I had let a sneaky thief in through a back door and I was (still am) paying for it. A couple of dear friends helped me pinpoint its name in just a few minutes but the eviction process is taking much longer than that. Expectations. In my younger years I used to say that if you don't have expectations you can't be disappointed, and in some ways that worked, but in many ways I hadn't actually let go my expectations, I just started expecting the worst. In more recent years, in my quest to be "more spiritual" I had decided that it was holy to have expectations, and in that way I fell prey to the common confusion between expectations and expectancy (more on that in a moment).
To be real, I hadn't realized just how many expectations had risen up in my life. They created a landscape of unholy mountains for myself and my loved ones to climb. And each time that one of these monuments to perfection proved to be insurmountable, my heart was left open to disappointment and bitterness. Over the course of years, the ruins of these expectations left scars that would send ripples of pain through my soul each time I would think of the situations that led to them. And what I'm learning is that the only way to overcome these scars is to allow myself to mourn the loss of those dreams. The dreams of how things could be, of how things "should" be. Because the pain of a broken dream is a real pain. But for true healing to occur I can't stay there, and neither can you. We have to clear the landscape. Not only of our broken dreams, but of every vision, realized and far off, of what life should be like. For me, I had to even clear away the things I believe are going to be God things in the future, because anytime I focus my heart on the gift of God rather than God Himself I fall hard. (There's a tiny story in the Bible about that too, if you want to read about Abraham and Ishmael).
But here's where the beauty and joy begins to make its return. I can't leave the landscape of my heart empty. I must fill it. So instead of expectations I choose to fill it with expectancy, or a word I like better: hope. I don't hope for the gift of God. I hope because God is giver. He is good. He is faithful. He will come through. He has great plans for me. And I know that not everyone is like me. Some people God gives extremely specific plans and they see the map of their life and they follow it and their perseverance is rewarded. I've practically begged God to do this for me. I've been gently prodded by people to make this map for my life so I can be more godly. But that isn't how God speaks to me. He asks me to trust. To sit quietly and let Him be God and wait on Him to open the doors. And when I receive that, I feel such a flood of peace and joy. And when I surrender to God's will, I see those things that I walked in, that didn't work out, truly were places God had led me, He just used them in a different way than I expected. He used them to make me who I am, to bring me to where I am. And in that moment, hope brings new hope.
As always, I am a work in progress. Every day is a challenge to choose hope over expectations. Every day I make the wrong choice. But I'm starting to choose right sometimes. And God has more than enough grace for me. What about you? How does God speak to you? Does He use long winding maps or does He ask you to take step waiting for the next to be revealed?
To be real, I hadn't realized just how many expectations had risen up in my life. They created a landscape of unholy mountains for myself and my loved ones to climb. And each time that one of these monuments to perfection proved to be insurmountable, my heart was left open to disappointment and bitterness. Over the course of years, the ruins of these expectations left scars that would send ripples of pain through my soul each time I would think of the situations that led to them. And what I'm learning is that the only way to overcome these scars is to allow myself to mourn the loss of those dreams. The dreams of how things could be, of how things "should" be. Because the pain of a broken dream is a real pain. But for true healing to occur I can't stay there, and neither can you. We have to clear the landscape. Not only of our broken dreams, but of every vision, realized and far off, of what life should be like. For me, I had to even clear away the things I believe are going to be God things in the future, because anytime I focus my heart on the gift of God rather than God Himself I fall hard. (There's a tiny story in the Bible about that too, if you want to read about Abraham and Ishmael).
But here's where the beauty and joy begins to make its return. I can't leave the landscape of my heart empty. I must fill it. So instead of expectations I choose to fill it with expectancy, or a word I like better: hope. I don't hope for the gift of God. I hope because God is giver. He is good. He is faithful. He will come through. He has great plans for me. And I know that not everyone is like me. Some people God gives extremely specific plans and they see the map of their life and they follow it and their perseverance is rewarded. I've practically begged God to do this for me. I've been gently prodded by people to make this map for my life so I can be more godly. But that isn't how God speaks to me. He asks me to trust. To sit quietly and let Him be God and wait on Him to open the doors. And when I receive that, I feel such a flood of peace and joy. And when I surrender to God's will, I see those things that I walked in, that didn't work out, truly were places God had led me, He just used them in a different way than I expected. He used them to make me who I am, to bring me to where I am. And in that moment, hope brings new hope.
As always, I am a work in progress. Every day is a challenge to choose hope over expectations. Every day I make the wrong choice. But I'm starting to choose right sometimes. And God has more than enough grace for me. What about you? How does God speak to you? Does He use long winding maps or does He ask you to take step waiting for the next to be revealed?
