Day Forty - Seven

The best things in life are unexpected - because there were no expectations.

Eli Khamarov

Therefore, my beloved, flee from idolatry.

1 Corinthians 10:14

In the past, I've been a really big dreamer. One of the first things I learned from my mom (and all those Tupperware ladies that were helping to raise me) when I was growing up was to dream big. Also, to set goals and to go after them. I believe it has been a beautiful part of who I've become as I've grown into adulthood. It has also become part of how I view others. I want others to dream big. I want others to live in the moment, to know that anything can happen if you're willing to work hard and take tiny steps each day toward your dream. I want people to expect great things from a wondrous God. However, it is this word "expectation" I am starting to exam as I near my 32nd year hear on earth. I feel like I've walked into a decade of unknown. There are a lot of reasons that I thought I wouldn't make it past my twenties. This is not a reflection of any type of morbidness. God healed me from a very dark season of destructiveness where I dangled a little too often off a bridge that was the barrier between life and death. After that, I just think I believed that I was hear for a short time, to display the splendor of the Lord, to comfort those that were in pain, to share my story, and to move on with Him. However, I am still here and I have been walking the unknown. I know what it looks like to be a creative writer, I know what it looks like to be a daughter, and I found safety in being a student -- I knew how to do that. Now I am in a new city, I am recently a wife, and I am in a new season of working without school. I'm learning. I'm stepping. I'm far less "in between" than I was a year a go, than I was even a month ago. What did I expect from this time in my life? And do we often get the word expectation mixed up with the word standard? I think having standards is much different. "I expect people to be ..." is different to me than not wanting people in your life who don't bring life, benefit, or only bring toxicity. That is a standard I want to uphold. What do you think? How do you define each word? I am beginning to define the word "expectation" as bondage. Our expectations come from so many places in this country TV, books, magazines, family history, the Bible, self-imposed ... Expectations are all over the place and they come from without and within. I was recently doing a day in my Bible study and it was about idolatry. I felt a little relief that I wasn't caught up in idolatry in such as toxic way as I was in my teens and early twenties. However, there are some things I still put before God in my life on some level. At the end of the day's lesson you are asked to talk with God about things you are still holding on to too tightly. Into my mind floated the word "expectations." To be all together raw and honest, which is what this devotion site started out to do, I have cried, had huge adverse reactions physically and emotionally, caused tension in relationships, missed out on big joyful moments in my life, beat myself up, and have found myself in times of depression because of expectations. How I think I should be as a friend, wife, person, writer ... How I thought planning a wedding was "supposed to be," what I thought a weekend, honeymoon, wedding day was "supposed to be." It is bondage and burden. I believe that is the only outcome having expectations can lead to. In a backwards way, I thought I was less of a person if I didn't have expectations, but maybe this is where I was confusion the word with standards and goals. It is okay to have hope, but I am doing away with all expectations in my life. It won't be easy. I admit I even project expectations on a subconscious level. There are subliminal messages from society seeping into my ears daily, but to the best of my ability and God's power (well, maybe just God's power) I am over expectation. I will even begin tossing around the idea of what I expect from God. I was always taught to pray expecting great things from God. However, I am now thinking that you know truths about God and you can pursue him, petition Him, love on Him, but let's be surprised, awed, and blown away by God. He's big enough to overflow our expectations anyway. His thoughts not my thought and His ways not my ways. I believe having expectations in a form of idolatry in my life. I am only to be satisfied by God and I know longer want to miss out on the joy from His presence by expecting something horrific or something amazing.

I just want to live, love, and be -- expecting nothing.

Giving and receiving. 

Letting go.