What to Expect

Remember that very popular book “what to expect when you’re expecting” ? 

It had a photo of a woman wearing a 80s pilgrim style “mumu” on a rocking chair on the cover and she was very very pregnant.

As I spent the night at CHOC hospital in Orange County I saw a lot of babies being treated for various reasons...

It dawned on me NO ONE really knows what to expect after you have a child..

You may expect to have a girl, and SURPRISE it’s a boy.

You may expect to have a smooth uneventful labor and SURPRISE you are in labor for many hours and the child is rushed to the Neonatal intensive care unit.

Or like me, you may have expected to have a son follow in his dad’s footsteps and ride a skateboard.... 

SURPRISE- autism.

Fast forward to 2020- SURPRISE seizures, a cyst and outpatient brain surgery.

NEVER expected that. 

None of it.

Life’s a faith walk not a cake walk.

We are wise to NOT have expectations.

We can dream big and of course as human beings we can have desires in our hearts ...but we have to remember that God is the ultimate One that gives us our blessings. He gives us His portioned out strength to allow the trials and tests that will come to us too...

Think of Manoah.

Not Noah. 

Ma-noah.

He was Samson’s dad. 

He had dreams. He had visions. He had expectations. He knew that God had a special plan for Samson. But he never imagined there would be a woman named Delilah or a day when Samson would have his eyes gouged out and be tortured (blinded) or that Samson would ultimately die in the act of killing the enemy...

Think of Mary.

Mary might have imagined having three kids...Perhaps boys -carpenters like their father. 

Her and Joseph were young so they would wait a few years before having children. 

She would never be expecting to carry Jesus in her womb before the actual wedding night and her love was consummated with her husband.

Or Joseph (Old Testament)

His dad always told him he was special.

He certainly felt special a “love child” conceived out of a special bond his mom and dad shared.

He had dreams... 

Joseph had literal dreams...

He would dream and the dreams would happen!

But Joseph never expected the dreams would be the very thing that made his brothers hate and resent him...

Think of Paul. 

Paul had expectations. 

He was a miracle!

He was miraculously saved and changed from Saul to Paul.

Everybody would love and appreciate his teaching -he may have thought...

SURPRISE.

He was ridiculed put in jail beaten and endured innumerable hardships... 

The Jews didn’t like him and the Gentiles thought he was weird but he would not let go of the calling Jesus put on his heart. Even though at every turn Paul experienced hardships ... he never wavered....  he kept his laser focus on Jesus the One he saw on the Damascus Road... the One who told him he would suffer for the Name. 

I have a girlfriend who said she wanted nothing more than to have a bunch of kids right away... she married her high school sweetheart and later found out she couldn’t have children of her own.

I know a mother who raised two children in the ways of the Lord only to have one child go away wayward and be addicted to drugs... 

I know many special-needs parents that didn’t even know what Autism was or how to navigate raising a child with Autism... These families had many expectations tossed to the sea but yet they held on with both hands to their anchor -  Jesus...

I know another woman who waited and waited for the right man. God brought him into her life and after 18 months of marriage he tragically died in a car accident and on top of that -she’s pregnant and now a widow at the same time...

SURPRISE

All of these examples are not to cast blame on God or make him appear  cruel...

God is kind, merciful generous forgiving loving and He is never anxious and His compassions fail not...

All of this is to reflect and remind you and serve as a reminder to myself that -

- we can’t really expect anything in this life.

Life is precious and fragile. 

Motherhood is a gift. 

Marriage is a gift. 

Knowing Jesus is the greatest gift. 

But life is messy and living life for Jesus can be costly because we truly yield and surrender all of our dreams all of our desires all of our expectations to Him. We can say “I don’t know what tomorrow holds but I know WHO holds tomorrow”

We have to focus on the Who of life...

Life not about your comfort.

 Life is about worshiping God and yielding to God and surrendering to God and trusting God. 

When our human expectations are crushed we have hope because we know that God is up to something good. 

Romans 8:28 is not a cliché it is TRUTH. Just look at the baby in the manger as we prepare to celebrate Christmas and remember Mary had dreams too. She was a virgin she was precious and holy and living a life set apart for God... and people looked at her all of her life like she was unclean. Can you imagine? 

May we reflect on our dreams....and expectations.

May we look at our dreams as a rough draft. God has the final draft and the final say and it will be beautiful and it will be beyond anything we could’ve designed in our own mind...