Lost Count

My particular situation has changed in terms of I no longer will be keeping track of how many days it takes to get the result. It is not the end result but the journey that is helping me most anyways. Besides that, I have neglected writing in here for over a week now anyways that I just don't remember what day I am on!

This morning I was reaching to do my devotion, but I still had a thought from last night that I felt compelled to write about. Expectations. I find that I place such large expectations on myself and unfortunately sometimes on others. I know I am not alone in this weakness. It is so easy to do, but it is nothing but hurtful to ourselves and to those around us. It is setting ourselves up for disappointment. Last night I had a very bad night emotionally. Thoughts and feelings were brought back up about my dad and it ended up being blown out of proportion. It caused me to take a small step backwards from the release I had been feeling with my grief. And I was getting upset about that. Why??? Because I had placed an expectation on myself that I am not allowed to go backwards in where I have gone with this, and I wasn't allowing myself to feel frustrated towards what was happening. I was trying to be the strength to everyone involved when I know I can't do that. I don't have enough strength within myself to do it. Jesus can absolutely help me and give me strength through Him to handle it all, but I myself cannot.

So then I thought, ya know....the only expectation I can ever have is in Jesus. I know you are thinking, well duh! But obviously it may not be such a "well, duh" thing or more people wouldn't have this struggle of expectation. Jesus is the only one that we can place such a high regard towards in terms of what we should expect from Him. These things that we can expect, because it says in the Word, are things such as peace, comfort, strength, love, joy, power....the list can go on and on. We can have these expectations because even though Jesus was human, He is still God. And God is everything. Now, can we have the expectation that we will find all these things immediately in Him....yes, but it doesn't mean we will ALWAYS feel those things because God is God, but WE are still human. We will sometimes have these walls built up that actually hinders ourselves from God. We don't allow him access because we are still trying to do things ourselves under our own terms. We have to just SURRENDER!

Moral to this post....expectations are bad when they are on ourselves, or others. Place your expectations, frustrations, joys, and love in and on Christ!! He can handle it :)