Great Expectations

“If we knew what God knows, we would ask exactly for what He gives.” - Tim Keller

There was a day many years ago where I sat in what was once the master bedroom I shared with my husband and cried. I was surrounded by the laundry of all four of our family members - his, mine, our boy and our girl. I had been folding it all, four baskets of it, when he had entered and given his final word on our fate - he wanted a divorce. And that was it. I had suspected it was coming but had hoped in my naivete that by folding laundry and praying for God to save this family that he would change his mind. I had visions in my head of our future together - camping trips with the kids, Christmas mornings, soccer games, proms and college graduations. I had told myself that this was the way things were supposed to go, and it didn’t matter if I didn’t really love him and never had. If I just tried harder, did a better job, kept up with the laundry and learned to be more patient, things would improve. We were a family, and we couldn’t break that up. God wouldn’t let that happen.

But it was happening. Despite my prayers and pleadings and visions of a family that I clung desperately to - God did not save my marriage. And so I sat in that room that had never known real love, face soaked with tears, as my life fell apart. This was not part of my plan. This was not what I had expected. This was not supposed to be my life.

Three weeks later I arrived at my parent’s doorstep on the other side of the country with nothing but a suitcase and my two year old little girl. In a state that wasn’t my home, a house that was no longer mine, and a town where I was a stranger, away from my friends and the life I had known. I was so broken, every bit of light that existed within me had been shut out and the best parts of who I had been were no longer there. Almost every night I cried myself to sleep, realizing that I was not even thirty years old yet but I was now living with my parents again. I had no job, no skills, no money, thousands in credit card debt, no car of my own and no credit to buy one. To say I was lost was an understatement. In my bitterness, I sobbed and asked God why. Why did you do this to me?

What I didn’t know was that the plans the Father had for me were far better than anything I had actually envisioned for myself. And when I think about it now, I realize I had been selling myself short and was far too easily satisfied with a life that would never bring me any real happiness. As it turned out, God wasn’t willing to let me settle. I was reminded of this the other day when I was reading the Psalms, and came to the following verse:

“No good thing does the Lord withhold from those who walk uprightly.” - Psalm 84:11

No good thing is withheld from us if the Lord sees it is good for us to have it.

Oftentimes, our greatest joys come wrapped in a package that we don’t find attractive and initially our instinct is to reject them. We don’t understand what God is doing, and this most definitely does not look like what we prayed for. But we cannot see all ends, nor do we understand the spiritual growth that needs to happen within ourselves in order to get to the place he intends to take us. If we look back at Israel’s exodus from Egypt we can see that same narrative. The journey from Egypt to the Promised Land was a ten day trip. It took Israel forty years to make it there. Why? Because God knew they weren’t ready. Their faith was weak and they wouldn’t have been able to to embrace the blessing he was about to bestow upon them.

Countless friends have related the same thing to me with regards to blessings in their lives that came late, unexpected, and not at all in the way that they had imagined. Always they had said that God graciously and in his wisdom did not give them what they asked for when they asked for it. Had he done so, they would not have appreciated it in the same way as they did when it was finally given. We always think we know what we want, but man is a fickle thing.

In the end, every trial in my life just brought me closer to him, as was his plan. It is from this vantage point that I look back on my life years ago and smile, thankful for the hardship and the beauty and the good that he brought out of it. My tears now are tears of gratitude and joy because I can see in the mess that he was always at work, always faithful. Life does not look at all like I had expected - it is so much better.