RE-CALIBRATING EXPECTATIONS & ACCEPTANCE

  I am comparing current experiences to those of the past and re-calibrating expectations accordingly.   Re-calibrating expectations  has ultimately led to acceptance and with acceptance has comes peace.  As a fan and author friend of  Elisabeth Elliot, I was encouraged by the following quote that grabbed my attention:

 " ...She handled dementia just as she did the deaths of her husbands. “She accepted those things, [knowing] they were no surprise to God,” Gren her husband and care giver said. “It was something she would rather not have experienced, but she received it.”

 

My years at Multnomah University were a trial run for the greater challenges that were to come. Dark Days 

They turned out to be one of the loneliest times in my life.

I had it all pictured in my head—how I wanted things to turn out.  I'd graduate from college, find my mate there, have five children, and life would deal me an abundance of great pleasant adventures. 

Accepting the fact that I may never have children after five years of marriage,  death of three failed pregnancies, and death of my only son years later were not on my agenda but God chose those incidents to work in my life. 

The disappointment I felt dealt a hard blow when those things I was anticipating did not occur. 

I grieved the future I thought I would have.

 

 
“…as it is my eager expectation and hope that I will not be at all ashamed, but that with full courage now as always Christ will be honored in my body, whether by life or by death. For to me to live is Christ, and to die is gain.” (Philippians 1:20-21)

 

Joe Stowell spoke about expectations. He said there is only one expectation we can control in our life and that is to have an eager expectation to magnify Christ wherever we are.
 Other expectations will only lead to disappointment.

"God, prepare us for what you have prepared for us." ~Marj Saint   Letting Go

 

1972

It is an unrealistic expectation to believe we can go through life without trials.

Prayer Chapel at MU

  I once heard someone say that "Adversity is God's university."

1971

  Don't think you can eliminate hardship from your life. Heaven's Gain

It has taken me years to arrive at a state of acceptance.  Loses have forced me to re-calibrate my expectations.

God gradually deepened my faith. I experienced His faithfulness in a way I never had before.

 

My loses are not over.  My body has other plans.

 Ps.16:9 "Therefore my heart is glad and my tongue rejoices; my body also will rest secure."

  I see wrinkles, have twinges in the joints, and moving slower, both mentally and physically.

Prayer Chapel in the evening hours.

 "As it is my eager expectation and hope that I will not be at all ashamed, but that with full courage now as always Christ will be honored in my body, whether by life or by death." ~Phil.1:20
 

  Behold, as the eyes of servants look unto the hand of their masters, and as the eyes of a maiden unto the hand of her mistress; so our eyes wait upon the LORD our God, until that he have mercy upon us.
Ps. 123:2 

 

"What a calling to be a handmaiden! Little things, little errands, relatively unimportant things that the mistress could easily do for herself if she desired to. “Lord, I’m your handmaid. You don’t have to have me.” But God has handmaids, and Mary was one of them."

So there’s a  little rebel in me that relishes the opportunity to preside over expectations assuming  such a radically alternative event would give peace.

Based on limited knowledge or experience, I indulge in drawing expectations and the tendency to count on expectations which make acceptance difficult to embrace when not fulfilled.

“Restlessness and impatience change nothing except our peace and joy. Peace does not dwell in outward things, but in the heart prepared to wait trustfully and quietly on Him who has all things safely in His hands.” ~E.E.

A Poem by Amy Carmichael

 

In Acceptance Lieth Peace

He said, ‘I will forget the dying faces;
The empty places,
They shall be filled again.
O voices moaning deep within me, cease.’
But vain the word; vain, vain: Not in forgetting lieth peace.

He said, ‘I will crowd action upon action,
The strife of faction
Shall stir me and sustain;
O tears that drown the fire of manhood cease.’
But vain the word; vain, vain: Not in endeavour lieth peace.

He said, ‘I will withdraw me and be quiet,
Why meddle in life’s riot?
Shut be my door to pain.
Desire, thou dost befool me, thou shalt cease.’
But vain the word; vain, vain: Not in aloofness lieth peace.

He said, ‘I will submit; I am defeated.
God hath depleted
My life of its rich gain.
O futile murmurings, why will ye not cease?’
But vain the word; vain, vain: Not in submission lieth peace.

He said, ‘I will accept the breaking sorrow
Which God tomorrow
Will to His son explain.’
Then did the turmoil deep within me cease.
Not vain the word, not vain; For in Acceptance lieth peace.