This is not new information to any of us. Since childhood, we have learned that our expectations are not always met. When we make JV instead of Varsity, when we expected to get a B on a test and got a D, when the person you're dating breaks up with you when you thought it was forever, and many other things. As we grow, the expectations get loftier...and more complicated. You expect to be handed a spouse by the time you're 30 and it doesn't happen, you expected that a certain career would be your dream job and it falls flat, you expect to have a baby and it's way more complicated than you expected, you have a baby and realize that there's special needs involved, the job you expected to have for years suddenly lets you go, you expected marriage and parenting to be fun and fulfilling and you realize some of your loneliest days have happened while surrounded by your spouse and kids, you expected to be healthy until you head to a nursing home some day and get a scary diagnosis in your 30s instead, and so many other things.
There's a crisis of heart that happens. It's real, it's stark, it's painful, to the point where your chest feels like it's going to cave in. You're dumbfounded, overwhelmed, sad and angry. You try to stuff the pain, thinking as we did as babies, "If I can't see it, it isn't there." And yet in your heart, in your chest, in your stomach it threatens to explode. The grief is real. You can't escape it. The more you push it down, the more it seems to want to inundate your soul. You start to think, "Where do I go from here? Do I give up? What does all this mean?"
Can I encourage you? It's okay. Mourn the loss. When life doesn't meet the expectations you had, the grief can permeate your entire being. Whether it's a one piece of big news, or living with an unmet expectation every day, it is OKAY to grieve. In fact, it is GOOD to grieve that loss. I have not just seen this kind of grief but experienced it many times. I've finally started to see something clearly: Until you mourn the loss of what you thought would be, you will miss the joy of reality.
Like I said, I have experienced this on many occasions. From simple things in my youth that really were big to me at the time, and therefore the grief was real...to my adulthood. I thought I'd easily be married by my early to mid twenties and that didn't happen. I was never an overly optimistic or unrealistic person about what marriage would look like, but I didn't expect that some of my loneliest days would happen in marriage, even when we would try the hardest to be the closest. I wasn't overly optimistic about being a mom, but motherhood has taxed me beyond what I thought was possible. I had no idea what it would be like to be a step parent to a special needs child (I tried to have an idea) and I had no clue what it would actually turned out to be. I didn't know how much I would miss working a job outside of the house, and how much being a mom would make me question if I was even an individual anymore. My gifts, talents and passions seem to move to the backburner. I didn't realize that having a job outside the home would actually become a crucial part of my day to day stay-at-home life to just feel human. I never expected to be cheated on because I'm sickeningly loyal, and I was in my dating years. I didn't think in a million years I would be looked into for the potential that I might be abusing my children, and I was...for 7 long months (of course, they left us alone at the end of it because they couldn't find anything). I could go on.
There are no words for the grief that overwhelms in you in big moments. Hearing the words, "Your girls will either be needing to go into foster care or someone needs to come live with you 24/7 for the foreseeable future, because of your daughter's unexplained injury. This could be up to 6 months." My chest felt like it had been crushed by a car, I exploded into tears. My life with my young kids was supposed to be happy and whole, how did this happen? Why was my personal life being intruded on by social workers, friends and family members (who were God's grace to us, but the grief was still real at the time), lawyers, etc? Why? What had I ever done to bring me to this place? If we didn't work it out with friends and family, MY kids would be in foster care? Are you SERIOUS?! Just the memory makes my eyes fill with tears. The grief threatened to drown me. This wasn't supposed to be part of my motherhood memories. It's a scar that's still there and will always be there.
I married the most giving and loving man I know. I couldn't be more blessed. But guess what? When the Apostle Paul says, "When you marry, you will have trouble..." he didn't say, unless you have a good spouse, or unless you're selfless, or unless you have kids, or any other "unless" statements. This includes us. My husband is cleaner than me, but in a strange twist, I'm more "organized." You can imagine the discussions we've had. I don't notice that things aren't perfectly clean because I do not naturally think that way. I will walk by full garbages, not because I want to, but my brain doesn't notice them naturally. I have other priorities, especially with the kids around! But because being clean is important to my husband, it does hurt him because acts of service is his love language on top of being a clean person. But I've had to do my best to be more observant about being cleaner because it means a lot to my husband. This is extremely difficult for me, to this day. It can cause conflict. We have to work through it, and always come out together on the other side. I don't desire for my husband to feel unloved, but missing something simple can make him feel like he doesn't matter. It's AMAZING in marriage how small things can become big things, in ways you just can't prepare for.
At the same time, I had expectations for date nights, for physical intimacy, for what evenings together look like that have not panned out with small children and busy lives. If I don't watch myself, I swirl down into the sinking sand of insecurity. It's a deep pits of tears and crushed hearts of feeling rejected and alone. There are periods where we feel like roommates, despite our best efforts to not feel that way.
We are handed griefs and questions in life that sometimes go without answers and a lot of comfort. I don't know why things happen the way they do. I don't know why I expect and think the way I do. But the truth is, when it comes to expectations in life, love and family...so many things do NOT pan out the way we plan. We look at our life and we say, "How did I get here?" Stuffing the pain down and pretending it doesn't exist doesn't work. Period. It makes things worse, oftentimes. So let me encourage you to grieve. Expectations of what life would look like are tossed out the window. The key to grief in any situation is let the grief come when it does, but don't stay there. Until you know and accept the depths of your own pain, it's impossible to move into the joy of the reality you actually live in. It's not denial of pain that leads to joy, it's owning the pain for what it is and working your way toward the light at the end of the dark tunnel. Life has a way of reminding us of our grief and pain in unexpected times and unexpected ways. But in order to move forward, it means ADDRESSING the grief. Grief is never "left behind." It will come up again. I was up at 10:30 the other night crying over a lost expectation (that I had lost several times over the years, and I'd lost it again, and I cried again). Dealing with the pain of feeling rejected and that I wasn't good enough, took a full half hour of dark thoughts and prayer.
The battle of expectations and reality doesn't ever end, here on earth. You dream of marriage, and once you get there, you realize you've never had to work so hard or felt so lonely (at times) in your life. You dream of kids, and you can be denied having them physically or they get there and you realize you've never wanted to kill someone you love so much at certain moments (for those parents who are honest enough to say it!). It's just crazy the level of let downs in life.
But the other truth is, there's a reason that everything is so broken: that our hopes and dreams of marriage, kids and white picket fences come crushing down on us when they're real, when the dream job turns out to be a nightmare, when you're scraping the bottom of the barrel just to pay the bills, when someone you love so much can make you angrier than you ever thought possible, when you see the depths of your own insecurities the further down life's road you go...something is broken here. Something isn't right. Why is everything so crazy and so out of sorts? How do we know something is desperately wrong with the world around us, and we KNOW it in our hearts? It's because the world God created was WHOLE, and WE broke it. We were given freewill. We can choose to do right and we can choose to do wrong. We have optimistic dreams about love and family because family was God's design to reflect how He works. He adopts us as his children. The church is his bride. God is a God of work and purpose. We love the work that feels like it gives us purpose as well. We love to succeed at that work, just as God said, "It was good" at the end of his work of creation. We reflect him. But we are a broken mirror of him.
In closing, let me share an intimate story from how my "sisterhood," as Kari called it, when my sister-in-law started. It was because of broken expectations:
When expectations get you down, it's okay to acknowledge the brokenness. But don't let the brokenness be the end. When my sister in law was diagnosed with stage 4 cancer after just having gone through stage 3 cancer two years before, I called her. I wondered what I should say to this mom of 4 who had just been given a terminal diagnosis that would eventually take her life, short of a miracle. Talk about expectations in life being shattered. This wasn't the way it was "supposed" to be. She picked up the phone and I said, "Kari, what can I do?" She said, "You can talk to God because I'm not talking to him right now. I've had a friend tell me she will throw rocks at heaven with me." The only words that came to my heart were the following and they changed the trajectory of our relationship as a whole, "Kari, you remember when your kids were little and you took something from them or didn't let them go somewhere and they were so mad at you they were hitting things? They didn't understand why you'd done what you'd done as a parent. You really couldn't explain it to them because they wouldn't understand. What did you do? You held them in their anger, you let them hit you as necessary. You could take the hits. The bond and love for the parent to the child hadn't changed. But the intimacy of holding the child in their pain brought comfort to your heart and to the child's as well. There's an eventual softening that happens when being held, even if the feelings are real. Kari, throwing rocks requires distance. It's something you do at something or someone who is far away. I would encourage you to, instead, feel the way you feel in His arms instead. Sit in your daddy's lap who has just done something that you don't understand and let Him have it. He can take your hits. Then, let His love wash over you. He will comfort you day by day, He will let you hit, cry, scream, etc. Just do it with His arms around you. It will change everything." And it did. Expectations were gone. She passed in 6 months, rather than the 2-5 year prognosis. But when her expectations were shattered, she grieved with the One who knew every pain of her heart and her body. She was never the same. I'd encourage you, in all of your broken expectations, to do the same.
Hannah, this is so good. Thank you!
ReplyDeleteI'm so glad you found it a blessing. ❤️
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