Expectant; When Faith is Tangled with Disappointment

For I know the plans I have for you, declares the LORD, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.”

Jeremiah 29:11

Expectant was my word for 2022. Expectant, wow! Who wouldn’t want this to be their “word”? My word in 2021 was brave, which made sense going into 2021, living through 2021 and looking back on 2021. I got it, I understood. But expectant? Honestly, I was afraid of it. Tentatively, I did what word of the year writers, content creators do with their word. I wrote it, I thought it, I prayed over it, but mostly I questioned it. Twice, I blogged it. Twice I retracted the blog after hitting publish. For eleven months I’ve wrestled with it, still afraid, still tentative. Many times I’ve prayed, help me have enough faith to hold this word as mine, help me to see it (because yeah, I couldn’t).

As a woman with a long unfaltering prayer list, of course my expectancy found residence in that list and I wondered would this be the year that God answered these prayers, in the way that I so longed for them to be answered? Had the bravery I discovered in 2021 been sufficient to fuel a life of expectancy in 2022?

The year did unfold, or perhaps unravel is a better description. Very early in the year, I found myself parenting in a space I had never been before. Navigating through deep waters with a hurting child, sitting outside a closed bedroom door, praying, crying, waiting, wondering. A very little later in the year, my heart cracked under the horrendous photos filling my feed from an Eastern European country being blown apart by missiles. I felt the horrors of war and the fear gripping mammas from both sides in a way I had never experienced. I entered an extended season of lament, waking in the night and in the morning sunk in sadness. As the year progressed, it added job pressure that I hadn’t anticipated or felt in over a decade. I watched as close friends moved through real life difficult places. Most recently, I’ve been ushered into a real life difficult place of my own. The kind where you get a result with a call back, and then schedule another appointment, and then wait for another result.

In this place, my faith around expectant has faltered. And if expectant was to be fueled by my faith, I have failed. My year of expectant looks like a year of wrestling, like a year of questions, like a year of words that can’t be left too long on paper. It looks like a year of prayers that can’t be articulated. It feels like an extended valley without a mountaintop.

The words, “Expectant, are you sure?” continuously tap, tap, tap their way through the moments of my life. And even the wonderful, beautiful, and abundant things that have happened in this past year, have been tainted by those few words, by that nagging doubt of God’s goodness.

Oh, that silly, burdensome prayer list. The one that I am consistent with, the one that I measure God’s goodness by. It is a bit of a shackle, a narrow-minded list, a narrow blinding list. It is like the list the Pharisees made while they waited for their Messiah, keeping them from knowing their Messiah in the flesh. It is like their list of expectations that their Messiah would come to bring them political freedom, when instead He came to bring all creation eternal freedom. It is like Peter’s list when he swiped hard to cut off a man’s ear in order to protect his leader, only to have his leader a day later give up His life voluntarily to usher in the possibility of redemption for all those who would ever persecute Him. It is like Saul’s list that had him jailing men and women of the early church. The same people he would later, as Paul, encourage, admonish and love through letters which laid the foundation for the eternal church. It is a list that leads me to wrestle rather than worship, question rather than trust. It is a list that has left me tentative, holding onto my exhale.

God never leaves us in this space. His purpose for us, of too much value. His love for us, much too great. He didn’t leave Peter. He didn’t leave Saul. He won’t leave me. He won’t leave you. But it may be that our expectations behind our lists need a little adjustment, perhaps even some cross-outs and re-writes. What can we expect, when our season of expectancy breeds disappointment?

• We can expect that God has not stopped working. He still is, regardless of whether or not we recognize it. He’s working for our good and His glory. [John 5:17, Romans 8:28]
• We can expect that God will not leave us, not while we lament, not while we falter, not while we question. He will not leave us. [Isaiah 41:9-10]
• We can expect that God is steadfast in His purpose for our lives, even when we hold the wrong list. His plans will not be thwarted. They will not be crossed out or rewritten. [Isaiah 46:9-11]
• We can expect that God is in control, and not a tyrant on the other side of the world. He does not abandon His throne. [Psalm 115:3, Daniel 2:21]
• We can expect that God will be patient with us as we learn to rewrite our list, as we learn to see beyond our little created happily ever after. [2 Peter 3:9]
• We can expect that the Holy Spirit and Jesus Christ are both interceding for us in prayer. When we cannot articulate our prayers, they can, they do, they are. [Romans 8:26-27, 34, Hebrews 7:25]
• We can expect that God will love us, even when we wrestle Him and even when hide behind our disappointment. [Romans 5:8, Ephesians 1:4-5]

We’ve got to align our lists with who God is, what He has promised, and what He is doing.

It is the beginning of December, eleven full months into my year lived under the canopy of expectant. It has not at all been what I expected. I took some time this week and sat in the photos that I have captured over the course of the year. Reminiscing, looking for something missed. Sitting and looking back at the entire year what I saw was beautiful, and what I remembered was abundance. As I remembered, there was not a flavor of disappointment lacing those days together, only the steadfast faithfulness of a God willing to bend down to bring me along, even when my coming along carried a scent of reluctance. There was a strong reminder that a symphony is being played loudly over my life [Zephaniah 3:17]. The same symphony which calls up the sun and pulls it down to set. My moments may have been haunted by disappointment, but looking at my days, weeks and months, all I’ve got is wonder.

God will have His way with me. He will. He’s the Father. I am the silly child drafting rules, outcomes, and limiting His purpose to match my own. He loves me too much to leave me wallowing with my crumbled wish list. Just like He loved Peter, and just like He loved Paul. Just like He loves you. If (or when) you find yourself dancing with disappointment in your Heavenly Father, take some time to look up, look back, look beyond yourself and remember His faithfulness, and His desire to orchestrate your life beautifully. Your God is not going to miss a note. Allow who He is and how He loves you, to propel you forward expectantly.

“Assurance grows by repeated conflict, by our repeated experimental proof of the Lord’s power and goodness to save. When we have been brought very low and divinely helped; sorely wounded and divinely healed; cast down and divinely raised again; have given up all hope, and been suddenly snatched from danger, and placed in safety; and when these things have been repeated to us and in us a thousand times over—we begin to learn to trust simply to the Word and power of God, beyond and against appearances; and this trust, when habitual and strong, bears the name of assurance; for even assurance has degrees.”

John Newton

Photo credit: Carrie Gentz Photography (IG @cgentzphotography)