expectations

Lent 2022: How’s Your Spirit?

March 6, 2022 — 1 Comment

A friend just asked me, how’s your spirit?

I respond: I’m fine.

She follows up: Are you really?

I think and respond: I don’t know…

I do know, but I got scared to say it because I didn’t want to disappoint her or tarnish her idea of who I am. I think she assumes I’m really strong and courageous. I am those things, but I’m also often really terrified. Because what I wanted to say, or actually, let me give myself some grace. Maybe I really didn’t know how my spirit felt, but after the breath and the pause, I do know.

Without self-pity, I feel like a disappointment. I feel like a loser. I feel like I’ll never live up to my potential. I feel scared. I feel lonely. I feel like my ship has sailed. I feel that my self-sabotage is too strong for me to break. I feel that my self-judgment is too thick for me to tear down. I want to feel confident and patient. I want to trust in god’s timing. I want to be fully seen.

Lent Day 30: I give up Pressure

March 18, 2021 — Leave a comment

The Lord will guide you always; he will satisfy your needs in a sun-scorched land and will strengthen your frame. You will be like a well-watered garden, like a spring whose waters never fail. Your people will rebuild the ancient ruins and will raise up the age-old foundations; you will be called Repairer of Broken Walls, Restorer of Streets with Dwellings.

Isaiah 58:11-12

I give up pressure. I give up the heavy expectations I put on myself that make disappointment more likely than possibility. I give up the pressure to be good. I give up the pressure to do it right. I give up the pressure to please everyone and make sure everyone is okay. I give up the pressure to be always growing upwards. Maybe growing involves three steps back for every 3.1 steps forward. I give up a pressure that keeps me scared and small. I embrace breathing into how I already have everything I need and that I already am everything I need, for this moment. The next moment will have enough worries of its own.

CBG COVID Challenge: #2

March 22, 2020 — 1 Comment

Being quarantined in a house with a family has brought up a lot of resentment in me. One, the family is together, planning dinners and game nights, while I am separated from my family and my friends. Two, they can sit back and receive my rent, while I struggle financially and scramble to apply for any employment during this #stayhome season. Three, they seem so happy and it only fuels my own bitterness. What do all these lead to in me? Victimhood. “I have it so much worse.” “No one gets where I’m at.” “Why do I always have to figure things out on my own?” “If this was the end of the world, I don’t want to die with these housemates…” I am a victim.

And a natural step is to continue the cycle of comparison and say, well there are people who have it A LOT worse than me. There are single parents struggling to feed their kids and pay rent. There are families with relatives who have died or are dying. Businesses are closing. Lay offs for people who have worked at a job for over a decade are happening everywhere. So if I want to play the victim card, and then see the state of others in a even grimmer state, I am left with GUILT. While it is helpful, when it gives you perspective to remember those less fortunate, comparison is not the way to get out of a state of victimhood.

What do my resentments reveal? Underneath my “woe is me,” what am I thinking? What is my “victimhood” preserving and protecting? My desires. My hurt. My unmet expectations. Because under the irritation and bitterness are my desires to be with people I love, to have a sense of financial security and to be in joy. All these desires are unmet. And I am scared; and I am hurt. I am sad I don’t have a partner that I’d like to be quarantined with. I am sad that my career after all these years still feels uncertain and stagnant. I realize that my joy is very much wrapped up in circumstances. When I am in this state of thought and meditation, God can work. God can work in our honesty and rawness. He can’t break in fully in our lens of comparison. So what’s the remedy to victimhood? Vulnerability.

Owe no one anything, except to love each other, for the one who loves one another has fulfilled the law.

Romans 13:8

Prayer: Lay before God your desires, your expectations and your hurt.

Creative: Write a haiku. (5-7-5)

Brave: Let someone know where you’re at, and tell them, you don’t need advice, just a listening ear.

Generous: Venmo $1 to someone to let them know you’re thinking of them, you’re with them!