Great Expectations? Or Greater Disappointments?

Expectations are a frightening companion to the events of life. Without them, experience is more like an intake of breath in a musty attic, leaving your life void of enough oxygen to make the action worthwhile. With them, it is like playing a bad game show of guessing what's behind door number three. The odds of it being a sports car is unlikely and you're not sure if the thrill of the chance is worth the disappointment of it being a quilted tea cozy. A gamble of the dice.

There's a pool of thought that without the pain of life, the sweetness would not be as delicious. It is hard to agree when you are in the midst of an unknown amount of distasteful. The theory to have loved and lost as a positive moment in your life has likely made you want to shun every optimist you've encountered, or worse. And knowing that your expectations could send you there even more violently is sometimes hard to deal with.

Dreams are often synonymous with expectations. The world is filled with slogans of how you should dare to dream, follow your heart, listen to the greater calling on your life. But what if that Dream ends up being a sports car in your head, and a tea cozy in reality? Where are your limitations, and when does reality and a mature perspective come into play?

Today a discussion developed in my kitchen over breakfast about how it is easier to hear God say no than it is to hear Him say yes. But often we wait, paralyzed by our fear of failed expectations, to hear that very quiet, often non-existent affirmative that our actions are lining up with the bigger picture.

Yet how terrifying is that first step? You haven't even lifted the second foot and you are earnestly listening for God to scream the cease and desist command. As if He didn't know that that first step was coming prior to your muscles engaging. At times that step is as far as you'll go, but there is a purpose in that one step. Even if it feels like wasted time and effort as a door slams in your face.

I have often lived in fear of having too lofty of expectations. And when it seemed like my dreams were some terrible prank, nothing but a light show, I have given up. However, I am beginning to see that sometimes those dreams are like the conjunctions in a sentence, bridging the gap from one thought that I have towards another that is on its way to realization. At times God will use my idea, my dream, to connect me to the bigger picture that I have been fearing that I'm missing. It is the waterway in which He directs my seemingly aimless ship.

Bits and Pieces

You told me to write, and here I am, the sun is still black and everyone is asleep but I wake up needing to expose myself in straight even rows of black letters, so orderly, my thoughts contrasts with the cleanliness of this page. I wasn't sure what would happen. Its been over a month since I've attempted artistic suicide. I should have known it would be you that would come out. That is what scares me most of all. It is unnatural to love this way. What is this frightening destiny that we are supposed to live out that love will not die over hundreds of miles and years of pain? Oh, its too late. I think I've taken a step onto that pirate's plank, but I remember too much...

I remember you sitting in the corner of my apartment, so bitter against the past you still carried, raging against things you've done, embracing the pain that you felt you deserved. I remember your knuckles white as you gripped the steering wheel, the night getting later as you internally screamed. You just knew you couldn't trust me with that story, that glimpse of your horror. Surely no one would still love you...

I remember crying over those lost faces, pleading the world to care. No matter how loudly I screamed, nothing seemed to change but the overwhelming sense of failure.

I remember the dizzying reality of living life so full I thought I would break. We did break and here we are again; another step onto the plank.

There are forces that are stronger than two people. Destiny, whoever you believe decides it, is pulling and pushing, guiding and directing until a couple of souls can begin to feel inside out. I'm afraid to write this story down, you may recognize yourself in it, and I'm not sure if the thin threads keeping us together will withstand the pressure of that realization.

I wonder what is the plan of God. He gave us the choices and the mind to choose, but then that destiny slaps us around as we deal with the fallout of what we've decided.

You keep coming back to me, but the situation is impossible. Do you lay awake thinking of the past or do you daydream about the future? I can vividly describe the past, his face, your face, their faces, our tears, but the future is so foggy. Perhaps its because a decision is waiting on the sidelines, waiting to be sent into the game and change what this will all look like.

Why is the next chapter of my book glued shut? Will it stay like that until we come to that decision together, to move forward into the crazy plan He's molded for us? Where along the way did we get lost in the day to day and become okay with being plain? Perhaps if I tattooed my purpose on my skin like God chiseled the Law into stone I would stay true to it.

Sacrifice is the key, but who will send their pawn out to be slain first? Protect the King, but at what cost of our dignity? At what cost of our dreams? At what cost of fear and money and practicality? Passion, dedication, overwhelming commitment to one another, to the others around us, God and the people He has called us to: this is what we would sacrifice for.

I'm going to write quickly, faster than I would speak, before I lose my courage to lay it out for everyone to see. I've kept that screen in front of me for too long. I've acted like I don't need anyone or anything, especially not what we had before. Its more than being in each other's company, its who we're meant to be.