Great Expectations

I've been thinking a lot - and possibly not praying enough - about expectations lately. Not just the major goals we set for ourselves, like Gitz's Life Goals displayed in the right hand column below, but the smaller goals we set sometimes without realizing it. They're expectations we're barely conscious of most of the time. The ones that shape us in ways we can't or won't clearly see.

My favorite TV show is called Being Erica. I describe it as "Canada's best Sci-Fi time travel relational comedy drama." It's about a 30-something woman with a long list of regrets. She meets a therapist who gives her the opportunity to revisit each regret knowing what she knows now rather than what she knew at the time the events originally occurred. I love that because it strikes me as an apt metaphor for one of the ways we grow and heal. We allow our perspective to inform our judgments, to shape and refashion our "shoulds."

When I first got sick five years ago I was angry with myself. I thought I should be healthy. Then I thought I should recover within a certain amount of time, or I should be able to keep doing X or Y and not surrender the active lifestyle I had enjoyed in the past. I fumed about how I should be able to get through the day without pain. Most days I couldn't avoid pain anymore. The track I was on to finish my master's degree in two years suddenly unraveled, leaving in doubt if and when I would be able to complete the coursework let alone return to full-time employment.

I found myself remembering an earlier transition in my life. God was leading me to make major changes career wise and I had not a clue what each next step would be. For a while I stood still, baffled as to which way to go. A dear friend of mine kindly suggested that it's hard for God to use a parked car. In that instance she was entirely correct. The thing is, though, a part of my brain took that piece of situationally applicable wisdom, generalized it to all things in life, and internalized it as one major "should": "I should be active if I am going to serve God."

Well, you can probably guess what comes next. Lately my car hasn't just been parked. For all intents and purposes it has been up on blocks in the front yard. This is like the part in the pilot episode of Being Erica where Erica loses her composure at a family gathering and storms out of the room crying, "I am suffocating under the weight of your collective disappointment and disapproval!" It feels stifling to be unable to meet the expectations my own sinful nature sets for me about the type of life I should be living. That, after all, is really another way of saying the type of life I deserve. In reality the type of life I deserve is eternal punishment for my rebellion against God. I should suffer unending separation from God for my sins.

But the cross undoes that should, and all the other shoulds, too. It frees us to live apart from human expectations - our own and others' expectations for us. It liberates us to live secure in God's love. His only expectation for us is that we should choose to accept His grace and love poured out for us, to be reconciled and brought into eternal fellowship with Him and one another. Isn't that a beautiful expectation?

Years ago around the time my friend and I first talked about my car being parked God let me know that I would move to Portland. At the time I mistook that little bit of divine revelation as a wild thought that just popped into my head. I was living on the other side of the country and had no desire whatsoever to move to the Pacific Northwest. Well, it's a long story but there's no doubt anymore that God was letting me know I would find myself living in Portland one fine day. So here I am, close to a decade after the itinerary was initially published, wondering what comes next. Honestly, I didn't want to move here. Even after it was clear that God was leading me I was resistant to leave the Rocky Mountain town I had come to love. It was the first place I'd ever lived that truly felt like home. I had a solid support network and great doctors. But when God says go it is best to get moving. My doctors all thought my health would improve here. I won't lie to you. It has taken no small amount of work to keep that hopeful prognosis from becoming a giant should. Whether my health gets better or worse, though, God is holding me tight. Each day I pray that He will help me live a life that glorifies, honors and delights Him and brings Him great joy.

My life is what He will make of it. What I need to do is not limit Him by my shoulds or anyone else's shoulds, for that matter. He can heal me this minute if He chooses. He can also give me grace to live abundantly and choose joy, unhealed. My only expectation, in the end, is that He will surprise me time and again with wonders I never could have dreamed. If this past week has proven anything it has proven that!