False Expectations

Today Pastor Dale said one of the obstacles to faith is a reliance on false expectations, things God never really promised but that we sort of imagined were promised. "God," Pastor Dale said, "seems to delight in obstacles," because so often He uses them in His plans. And I was laughing/crying over this (poor Rosemary...I don't think she quite knew what to do with me this morning), because I was hearing my own story.

I am by nature a very decisive and opinionated person who makes snap judgments untempered with mercy and who feels strongly about just about everything I care about at all. I like plans and structure and control and knowing what's coming next, and often I've found myself thinking that being a really good Christian would mean not needing to lean on God so much because you were actually learning the lessons. (I like lessons, too. And grades. Oh, do I like grades.)

But I've noticed a pattern forming....

• Freshman year of college, soon after telling people I couldn't imagine rooming with anybody but my current roommate, said roommate announced she would be living with someone else next year. But through a mutual crush on a deskie neither of us has kept in contact with, I met my sophomore and junior year roommate Rachel, who remains a friend to this day. (I also found out just how many people were watching my back that year...many of them went and talked to the resident director of the dorm to ensure that I would be able to stay on a floor I'd grown to love.)
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• I swore I wouldn't stay in Grand Rapids. Why on earth wouldn't I just move home? Hadn't that been what I'd wanted from the beginning? And I would especially not stay alone. But then it came down to March of senior year, and I decided I was going to live with four other girls. And then three dropped out. And then Kerri got a job in Denver, after I had already gotten a job in Grand Rapids. Well-played, God....
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• I used to think that people with duct tape on their headlights were annoyingly cheap. How could they drive around looking so white trashy? Because (as I discovered when I knocked my own headlight loose) fixing one of those lights costs about $600. Oh. That's why. Good reason. I drove around with duct tape on my car for quite a while.
  
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• I have a list (long enough to be embarrassing if grace hadn't made it humorous) of friends whom I initially did not like. So now I rather expect that, when I meet someone I strongly dislike, we could probably end up being good friends.
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• I was going to be one of those girls who get married right out of college, but I didn't even date in college.
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• If either my brother or myself were ever going to get married at all, it would certainly be in chronological order. Because that's How Things Work.
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• Oh, and there was depression, and dealing with other friends in dark places, when my earlier impression had been that real Christians didn't get depressed.
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• In retrospect, I think my favorite day of my European trip last summer was the day everything went wrong. We had an over-booked schedule already, and then I hadn't set my alarm and woke up over half an hour later than expected (seriously, we were so tightly booked that we couldn't spare half an hour...this is something I learned from, too, believe me). There was a terrific traffic jam that slowed us up for another hour or so. A fellow traveler had difficulty with her Metro pass. The plan had been to see The Merchant of Venice at 7:30, but as we were (finally) sitting on the train to London I realized this was clearly not going to happen. And I was okay. And not stressed out. And it was so blatantly obviously the peace of God that it became that moment on the train I treasure most of all from that trip.

I could probably go on, but those are just the highlights that came to me just now. I'm certainly not saying that it's always easy for me to remember now to lean on God because He knows what He's doing even when I don't, and that I don't have to be in on the plan in order to trust that I will benefit from it. But it's certainly easier to remind myself of that when I have such a stockpile of examples to look back on.

"Beloved, we are God's children now, and what we will be has not yet appeared, but we know that when He appears we shall be like Him, because we shall see Him as He is." (I John 3:2)

And that is something I can expect with 100% certainty.