Realistic Expectations

1. Where have you been caught up short because you have failed to live with realistic expectations?

This is going to be a tough one to answer. Because some of the answer is so obvious, but the obvious only deals with what has happened in the past two months. And that's not where things started to fall apart; it's just the most recent adventure.

So talking about the obvious (unexpectedly having to move out of the Cryders without my home to move back into) seems pointless. We've talked the subject to death, and the only resolution is that somehow, God's good and in control. Let's not beat it with a stick. Because if I had managed to answer these questions my first time through the book, that wouldn't even have been true yet.

There must be a deeper, more fundamental answer, or more answers in general. I definitely have issues with realistic expectations. I am very careful not to make promises I'm not sure I'll be able to keep, because I know that I have always gotten desperately disappointed when people have failed to live up to theirs. Especially people I love. You've seen it up close and personal of late; I don't really have to explain that part.

But I don't really know how to get deeper into the question. I've spent most of my adult life with virtually no expectations – intentionally designing a world in which everything was up in the air, itinerant, adventuresome, living on the edge and never knowing what tomorrow would bring... and having no real relationships. Pretty sure those two things go together. No one can fail you if you don't trust anyone but yourself.

Until you fail you. I'm betting it's hard to believe, but for all those years of traveling, I really felt happy. Not “I'm pretending to be happy while covering up all this crap beneath the surface” but genuinely, honestly reveling in everyday life. God was there, but I didn't particularly need Him. I was healthy, successful, alone but not lonely, one of those people their friends look at and say, “Wow, that person really knows how to enjoy life, every minute of it.” (Hard to believe today, I understand.)

And I guess that life I created probably initiated in the shattering of my expectations of what life ought to be like, when I lost Toni, and so much else, back in 1990. Aren't unrealistic expectations part and parcel of the adolescent/college experience? So I engineered a world where it wouldn't happen again. And I thought I had succeeded. For a long time. Until the depression overtook me. 

But that still doesn't really answer the question. Because I don't know how or if unrealistic expectations were what kept getting me into trouble in the years between when my body started to fail me in my early thirties and when you guys found me at 40. I just kept sliding downhill, still unable to let anyone get close to me, as the joy slowly drained out of my existence. I tried to turn to God, more than once, but couldn't see past my own failures to His grace. I'm not sure this question was particularly relevant to me until I started trusting people again. It sure as hell is now.

2. What must you do every day to be both realistic and hopeful at the same time?

Wow, I wish I knew the answer to this one. It's a big trap for me, because I spent so long relying on myself, and I have failed myself so spectacularly. Is this like the “point 3 of the sermon is always Jesus” rule of preaching? The answer is always “trust that God is good and that He is in control”? That seems too easy (while at the same time frustratingly difficult). Believe that God's love actually is perfect, that expectations in Him are never unrealistic, because He can and will live up to all of them. So when people fail me, I should look to God as my hope. And when I fail me, I can know that He loves me just as much as if I had done everything right. Is that “realistic and hopeful”? Is it something I can actually manage to do "every day"? 

More to the point, is this even what Tripp is trying to get at?