Great Expectations

Everyone walks around this beautiful world with expectations, whether we know it or not. When I go to my grandparents house on any given Sunday, I walk up to the door with the expectation that on the other side are two little munchkins playing with their toys, my grandma will be in the kitchen cooking up something good, and the rest of my family scattered throughout the house. When I go to work I expect to leave covered in glitter and gangnam style stuck in my head. Our expectations can be realistic or not and are usually met or surprisingly changed. They are birthed in our experiences or in the experiences of others. If you are lucky you will learn how to be expectationless( I think I just made up a word...just roll with it.) when going into a new culture. I think that I have learned to be somewhat expectationless when I go into a new culture. When I left for Bangkok I tried to be open-minded and as a product I had many wonderful experiences, created amazing memories and made beautiful friends. I'm so thankful. A year ago I left Bangkok. I left with expectations of what life at home would be like. Its impossible to reenter my culture without expectations because I have experiences and memories of life at home. Plus I have knowledge of what reentry shock is and some of the issues missionaries face when trying to adjust to life in 'merica. But even with few/low expectations they were still blown out of the water. So how would I describe the last year, well if you asked I would probably say it was OK. I guess for the sake of this blog I will actually go into what OK really means.

 Before I go into that let me tell you a quick story. The other day my step mom was watching some reality show, I forget what its called, and in one scene a man is singing some gospel song that he had written. I turn to my step mom and ask, "why is he sweating from his eyeballs" she replies, "ummmm no I think he's crying, that would be a weird place to sweat." Obviously I'm not the a super emotional person and on top of that I laugh at super inappropriate times. Humor is my coping mechanism. So being an awkwardly not so emotional person I find it strange to say that this last year has been extremely emotional. Totally didn't expect that.

 To avoid making this a pity party and about how mad I was at a number of people, I just want to say that I was let down and some of my expectations were way off. I learned that alot of my friendships were shallow. This isn't to say that I was friends with bad people, actually I was friends with great people, its just that the relationships never went very deep. I expected my friends and supporters to help me transition and be there for me when I needed to cry. I think that this was hard for people to do because if they didn't know me very well then they didn't know that when I said that everything is OK...it really wasn't. Feeling lonely and abandoned by people that I cared about made me really sad, which made me miss Thailand, which made me even more sad. But the sadness didn't last long, it soon turned to anger. I was angry at my friends and at God. From there I grew distant, at this point even if old friends did want to hang out, I would just push them away. I grew distant from God and even left my church for awhile. There was a period of time when I didn't even try to pray. This season was full of loneliness, anger, frustration, and stress. It would be horrible if my story ended there luckily it doesn't. My story doesn't end in despair and I believe that's because I am in love with the maker of heaven, my savior, rescuer...my God. And He is faithful to go after the lost. He never fails to surprise me with His love.

 I think the turning point was the night I went to my friends church for a worship service. I walked into the church with a glimmer of hope in my heart. As I sat and waited for the music to begin, I decided to pray. I tried but I didn't know what to say and it was sounding really awkward so finally I just said, " God I just need you to send me a message through one of these people here tonight. Amen." Once the worship started I kind of just sat there, not really into the music. I eventually ended up sitting on the ground contemplating whether or not I wanted to leave. For some odd reason I was getting really annoyed and wasn't enjoying the service. When I was close to leaving, a woman came over and sat next to me. She asked if she could pray for me and said that God wanted to tell me something. At that moment I just started crying wildly. The woman went on to share the message which was everything my heart needed to hear. I was once again in awe of God and His faithfulness to go after the one sheep that was getting a little lost. That was the first 6 months being back in 'merica.

The last 6 have been better, (I promise) I went back to school with an attitude to be open to other people and actually try to make friends. I have been going to church and have been participating in college Bible studies. But most importantly I have the desire commune with God again. I have learned alot in the last year, about myself, about God and the expectations I carry.

 Here are some of my expectation do's and donts.

 -Don't expect to be in a healthy relationship with God if you are screaming at Him with your fingers in your ears
 -Do expect to be vulnerable in asking for help so that people know when you need to be heard
 -Don't expect people to come out of no where and say hey lets be besties
-And do expect some friends to only be passer throughers

 One expectation that has never changed is that God is always watching over me, He is always loving and faithful. This last year has been tough, I am so glad I can look back now and smile.