Life comes with a lot of expectations either put on you by someone else, by your culture, the society you live in, or by yourself. 

I’ve probably written more than one blog about my feeling on expectations. I don’t like them. I wish they didn’t exist. 

But the reality is, they do. 

And wherever they come from, we can easily get crushed by the crippling guilt that might come from not living up to them. 

I suffer mostly from made up expectations that come from my own brain, but have convinced myself they are from other people. 

Wherever yours are coming from, I want to encourage you to, simply, do what you can. 

It sounds like an overly-simplified answer to a psychological complex question. 

But I have to tell myself on a daily basis that I can only do what I have the mental, physical, emotional strength to do in that moment. 

If that means that I can only do 1 load of laundry instead of the looming 6 loads I’ve let build up – then I do the one. And sometimes (most times, lately) it might mean not doing any laundry at all. 

We can only rely on our own strength for so long before we will inevitably fail ourselves and the others around us.

The Christmas season we have created as humans is wrought with expectations that can leave us feeling unworthy of the love, gifts, and warmth of the season. 

But then we remember what it’s all about. 

Jesus required nothing of you when he came to this earth and was born to an unwed mother in a stable. A light of hope in a world yearning for something more. 

So, this Christmas season in the midst of the stress and building expectations, do what you can, and take a moment to be thankful for a Savior come to a world to make up for all your unmet expectations