“Life hasn’t turned out quite like I expected.”

I heard at least 3 people say this today.

I, too, have been a culprit of speaking this out loud many times.

What is it that shapes our expectations? Where do we get these ideas that things will turn out a certain way? Why do we desperately cling to them thinking, “If I do this or that, or if I pray hard enough, or am a good enough Christian, it will happen the way I think it’s supposed to.”

A friend called to tell me her tale of unmet expectations, today. Normally, she orders her groceries for her and her husband from a specific store and picks them up curbside. Super easy and an efficient use of her time. Yesterday, she decided to try a different store close to where we have Bible study and pick them up on her way home. There were more than a few technical difficulties and long story short, her order went to the wrong store and too much time was spent on the phone trying to have the ordered canceled and her money refunded. Expectation not met – Round 1.

So, she went back to her normal store and placed an order for pick-up today, certain that the tried and true, familiar store would offer her the safety of met expectations. In a shocking turn of events, she had thought she had ordered four oranges, but when she picked them up what she got was four 5-lb. bags of oranges. For those of you keeping track at home, that’s 20-lbs. of oranges on their way to a household of 2 people. Expectation not met – Round 2.

As much as we try not to, we spend a lot of our time focusing on the things we don’t have or that we didn’t get or that we’ve never done, on the things we got in place of the things we wanted, on the 20-lbs of oranges. On the expectations that weren’t met.

These negative thoughts and processes open up tiny little cracks left in our heart form the loss of unmet expectations. The enemy, crafty as he is, squirms his way in. He lies to us, telling us that, without those things that we thought we needed or would receive, our lives do not hold value.

And those lies begin to sink deeper down into those cracks creating rotting, burning holes that we are afraid can never be healed.

But when we turn our hearts away from what we do not have and toward God in thankfulness for what we do, we find that those cracks start to fill up with life-giving things like joy, peace, love, goodness, and eternal perspective. Perhaps some of the cracks might not ever be fully healed this side of eternity, we can be certain that when we meet Jesus face-to-face, our hearts will be more whole and full than we can even begin to expect. All our expectations: met in Jesus.