You’ve heard it a lot: expect great things. Which is great. It’s hopeful. Like win the lottery hopeful. I grew up in a true christian home, so of course we didn’t gamble or play the lottery. BUT. I used to daydream that maybe one day I would find a random abandoned ticket in a parking lot, and just happen to be in the room when my parents turned on the evening news at the precise moment they were picking the power-ball numbers. I envisioned standing in the corner of the living room behind the couch, carefully pulling the crumpled up ticket out of my faded blue jean pocket and unfolding it. Then I slowly tracked with the announcer, number after number, until - to my utter shock, every last number matched!!! We could claim our rightful prize and hightail it out of that mobile home to a mansion in the city,complete with horses, servants, 2 swimming pools, and anything to drive other than a station wagon! All guilt free, of course, because after all, I was just an innocent by-walker to a lotto ticket I didn’t dare purchase because of my religious convictions. Yet I would gladly reap the reward of someone else’s folly. Truly twisted, if you think about it…
I digress.
The point is, we have been told a lot to expect great things. If you think it, dream it, hope it and close your eyes tight enough with a good dose of pixie dust sprinkled upon you, the cosmic blessings will reign down on you!
Then there is reality.
You can hope and wish and dream and even put in the brain and brawn and elbow grease and long hours and hustle and still smack into a wall and break your nose. It doesn’t mean you lost. It means you hit reality.
It’s at this point you either quit and give up and become a narcissistic Nancy Negative or you keep pushing and trying.
Oh the Nancy’s of this life that just eeeeeeeeeeeverything bad happens to them. Always. Their plight is the worst. And it keeps getting worse-est-er. (yes I made that up. It’s the only descriptive accurate enough). They are the only ones that ever have sick kids, back pain, job loss, budgets, frizzy hair, insurance fraud, PMS, brown avocados, flat tires, diaper leaks, frozen pipes, or unexplained skin rashes. It’s just always so flipping bad.
Parents are the worst, it seems. They are the only parents on the planet that have a kid with acid reflux this bad. Or that has a kid with this many food sensitivities. Or that has a child that just won’t sleep train like the entire rest of the planet’s children. Or that is this difficult to train and in need of supernatural intervention. They are the only parents that are giving their all to do their all and it’s all getting thrown in their face in the form of a squishy screaming tyrant throwing sweet potatoes across the table with a plastic miniature spoon.
Bless their hearts.
But non-kid people and singles do it too. The “where is my amazing future calling” and why isn’t it gloriously revealed to me now? Where is my amazing godly yet wild and edgy and adventurous and hot spouse? Weren’t they going to be dropped in my lap after I prayed for an hour by my bed late at night in true Paying Hyde fashion? They are the only ones not married among their friends. Not famous enough. Not doing enough. Not pretty or handsome enough. Not progressive or artsy or edgy or hipster enough.The only ones with a sucky family back story. Or maybe they are married but why isn’t it as cool as everyone made it sound? We miss the honeymoon phase! Or we never had the honeymoon phase. Did I marry the wrong person? Life is bleak. I gained 10lbs on that honeymoon cruise with the 24 hour ice cream and pizza buffet and flowing cocktails. My husband will never have eyes for just me anymore. We should get a dog. Shouldn’t we get a dog? That will make us a real family. But wait, we need to buy a house! Apartment living is for fake adults, we need to do this thing for real! Prove we are owning this new family life! Climbing the ladder. But I hate my job. I really need to look into something else. But we need it for the insurance. We may try to get pregnant. But what if we can't? What if we struggle with fertility issues? Will I feel left behind all my friends popping out babies like they are bouncy ball vending machines! If we wait too long to try, will we be too old? Will I even be able to run around the yard and play ball with my kid? Or will I be hobbling and have to hire a nanny? Can we even afford a nanny? We need to set up a savings account for that now….
And so it goes. Life is ticking on by and so are all your fears and disappointments and letdowns and shattered dreams.
I was at a mom’s group the other morning. Well, I use that term super loosely. Basically we are a bunch of mom’s gathering in whatever we managed to scrounge around and find that was clean, gathering in a circle, sitting in chairs. Just to paint the picture. Real life, folks. Which I dig. As we talked about gospel-centered living in our everyday, one girl spoke up and said something to this effect: “We are trying to be super intentional about what we let in. What we choose to believe people tell us about this season. Everyone is saying now that I’ve had my second baby ‘oh, these are the toughest years. It’ll be a miracle if you remember it. Or ever live to tell about it.’ And ya know, we just don’t want to live that way. Sure, it has it’s challenges, but we are expecting things to be great. And the more we have done that, the more we have enjoyed the journey.”
My heart gasped and I thought yes sweet Jesus!!! That is it. What would it look like if we lived that way? Not expecting great things, but expecting things to be great. Squeezing whatever we could out of whatever we had before us in that moment, and constantly offering it up to Jesus to sift through it, tossing the chaff to the wind and keeping the golden grains of goodness to pour upon our heads in beauty.
You know what though? This requires something. Actually, it means there is no room for this one thing: fear. You cannot live in fear and expect things to be great. Fear causes you to brace - brace for the negative, the perilous “just around the corner” tragedy. It holds you back from being free to enjoy the moment because you’re scared it may be taken from you the next.
As we think in our hearts, so we are. We have to renew our minds with truth. The truth? God has given you the abundance of His riches and longs to see you flourish. Life will not be a bowl of cherries, a bed of roses, or whatever corny idiom you want to come up with. But if you chose to live fearlessly, you will expect things to be great.
This morning the weather was spot on, a beautiful breeze and a hint of fall in the air. We got up and decided we were going to take everyone for a hike! Great idea, the kids will be pumped! After the initial excitement, we were met with one wardrobe meltdown, one whiny child, one with a misplaced blanket (and tears ensued), one turn around to go back home and get something we forgot, one empty tank of gas, two restaurants that could no way within the next year seat a family of 6 for breakfast, ten cars in front of us in the Starbucks line, one kid that totally forgot shoes, one trip to goodwill to try on 8 different pair of shoes until we found one that semi-fit, five people in line ahead of us while one very, very old and meticulous man checked us all out for 30 minutes, four people hitting up Kroger to scramble for food, and a family of six sitting on the ground on the sidewalk by an abandoned hotel eating oranges, dry cereal, and mini muffins out of desperation at 10:00am.
I’m sitting there sipping my coffee and thinking to myself “Wow. Quite the epic family hike in the woods I was dreaming of this morning! Why does everything have to be such a flippin circus act?!”
I wanted to pout. The kids were arguing over who ate the most poppy seed muffins and I just wanted to crawl in a hole and die. My mind drifted off to just how glorious a week of being completely alone and doing whatever the heck I actually wanted to do with no disturbances sounded.
As I sat there I knew the battle was real. So very real. Real for my soul, my joy, and my choice to believe we were going to make things great. I sighed a prayer and sipped my warm coffee and smiled a genuine choice to live fearlessly.
We loaded in the car and headed off to the trail. It was fantastic. The weather was beautiful, the kids love to hike, the air was so fresh. We met an amazing couple that have gone ahead of us 10 years and have our same family grown up a bit and they just so encouraged and inspired us. Well, I was mostly inspired by her amazing physique and perfect skin, but the words she said about raising kids were good too.
We collected rocks and sticks and smushed bugs and created our own relay races. I tried to the teach the kids cool camp songs, but they looked at me funky and started singing Toby Mac in stead. My bad.
To be honest, we did have a poop blowout, leaky water bottle that made all the contents of my backpack swim, one bloody knee, some insect bites and a screaming 2 year old for 1 mile on the way back.
But. I chose to expect things would be great. And they were. We made great memories. We were in nature close to our Creator. We took a minute to breathe in our hectic lives. When we look back through our photo album of the Instagram photos of that day, we will smile. Like we always do when time has passed, with great warmness of heart and nostalgia, only remembering the good.
So can we just go ahead and remember the good now?
That’s what I’m asking God for. To renew my mind in His truth. To live fearlessly. And to expect things to be great.
