This Isn’t What I Pictured
No matter how hard you try, this happened to all of us regularly. You plan every last detail of your child’s birthday party and wake up that day to a sick kid and you have to cancel it. You dream about your beautiful beach wedding and it storms and rains the whole day. It can be even smaller than that though, you plan to have Tuscan chicken pasta for dinner and everyone is looking forward to it, and then you get cooking only to realize the chicken spoiled and now dinner is ruined.
We have this strange tendency to picture our lives or a certain event going a certain way and when, as most often is the case, it does not go exactly like our daydream we are crushed and confused. Whether realize it or not we are putting a lot of hope in those daydreams. I had this happen when I had my daughter, I didn’t have a rigid birth plan but I definitely had some desires of what that would be like. Those daydreams of mine definitely did not include her needing to go to the NICU for a while and not getting to hold her for 7 hours. I was crushed and I cried over that for quite a while, but here is the thing God never pictured it any different. God knew every detail of that day and He was right there with me.
We are all currently experiencing a year of unmet expectations. We expected our kids to go to school everyday until mid June, we expected to go to church every Sunday, we expected to go to work 5 days a week. We did not expect a global pandemic to change every single part of what our day looks like, and that is really hard sometimes. It’s hard when everything you viewed as a given and normal is upended and shaken. It’s ok to feel sad your kid didn’t get their birthday party with friends this year, it’s ok to be sad you haven’t gotten to visit your sister since Christmas, and it’s ok to feel confused with how to balance school from home and work at home.
Take those feelings to God, that is what He’s there for and He wants to know what is hard for you right now. This year has been hard and we would be lying if we said otherwise, but there has also be so much good that was probably never an expectation for you at all. I never imagined my husband could work from home and how much joy that would bring our family and how much that would grow his bond with our daughter. I never expected to not see family for 7 months, but it has forced me to be creative as to how to keep them in the loop and feel close to us still. I never expected to not be able to go-go-go all the time, but in slowing down I’ve gained a greater appreciation for my home and given me time to find enjoyment in gardening and helping my husband with yard work.
This year is hard, but it isn’t impossible. On the days where I focus more on what I thought we would do this spring and summer I’m bitter and sad, but when I shift to thinking about all the little things that probably wouldn’t have happened without us being forced to slow down and stay home I’m grateful. I challenge you this week to think about what specific unmet expectation has been hardest for you in all of this, mourn it, and then give it to God and look for where you’ve been blessed by this time. We cannot change what has happened and what we didn’t get to do, but we do not have to stay in that sadness and frustration.
LB