Expectations

Mustard Seed Chronicles: Story Time with LU Grandma

If the years 2020-22 taught us anything, it is how dangerous and difficult life is when our expectations are not met. As we start this new year, may we heed God’s encouragement to set our expectations where they belong.

Years ago, our family had a situation at our house that was very unsettling. I went to our Pastor and I was telling him about it when he said, “Timi, your problem is not with the situation. Your problem is that your expectation is in the wrong place. You expect that people ought to act a certain way and things ought to go a certain way. When they don’t it blows you out of the water. Why do you suppose so many women commit suicide after Mother’s Day or Valentine’s Day? It is because they didn’t get the ‘Hallmark experience’ they expected or what those days were supposed to be like?”

Pastor also said that if our expectations have not been fulfilled, Satan has a heyday with us. “I know you, Timi. If somebody gave you one rose, you would put it in a place of honor. You would tell everybody about how thoughtful it was of that person. What if you wanted to bless someone else and you took a whole dozen roses and gave them to the person and they said, ‘Oh these are nice,’ put them down, and then said, ‘What do you need?’ Because they didn’t fulfill your expectations of how you felt they ought to act, based on how you normally act, you would be very sad.” He was right.

Here in the Parent and Family Connections Office we get a lot of calls each semester from parents who have set their expectations of the university in ways that we just cannot fulfill. It’s not that their expectations are wrong; it is just that they have placed them in the wrong place.

All those years ago, Pastor gave me such wise counsel. “Timi, your expectations have got to be in the Lord, and in the Lord alone. Then you will never be disappointed.”

I put his counsel into practice and have learned over the past 50 plus years that if I don’t have expectations for my life and my joy based on how others act or respond, I am so much happier and so much more at peace! Missed birthday cards, late evening phone calls, special anniversaries and holidays spent dealing with a death in the family or hospitalization or surgery – none of those are “supposed to happen” — but with my expectations in the Lord’s faithfulness and goodness, it has been possible to live a more peaceful, happy life.

Let us take this moment and look at our expectations, check that they are not based on what we might expect someone else to do, how they should act, or on some event; but just place our hopes and plans in the Lord!

That’s what I want for all of you, LU Family, too.

Prayer:

Heavenly Father, I pray that we will all place our expectations in You, Lord! Do not let us place them in our kids, in the school, or in faculty and staff, but in You, Lord! When wonderful things happen, we will be surprised, and that’s wonderful! But when things don’t go in the way we think they are supposed to, it is not going to upset us as much as it would if we had our unrealistic expectations.

We will praise You for the difference in our lives!

In the precious name of Jesus, I pray. Amen!