How unmet expectations are actually a gift

This is the second post in a three-part series about discouragement. I’m taking you on my  journey of how I’ve moved past finding my worth in my work, and what the gift of discouragement can teach us. 

I was livid. Halfway through my sophomore year at Texas A&M, I was earning a B in English. For crying out loud, I was a journalism major — Hey, T.A. I can write; it’s my major. I won writing awards growing up. I made all A’s in high school because I was competent in sentence construction and main-idea expansion. As any irritated college sophomore would do, I visited my teaching assistant and protested. She listened patiently and told me to work on my craft. The nerve.

What I expected was an A. What I got was a B.

When my expectations are unmet, I can spiral downward.

This happens because, as Achievers, we lean more on self and less on the God of amazing grace, and we tend to place our worth in our work. If our work isn’t telling us that we’re worth an A, we feel discombobulated. Achievers believe that every day is a new opportunity to prove our worth. When our worth isn’t reflected in the metrics we expect, a tailspin follows.

When I look at metrics on my blog and the numbers aren’t meeting my expectations, I can choose from several reactions to stop the pain, as Larry Crabb writes in Shattered Dreams, I can:

1. Numb what I desire, or “manage what I can, seek relief where available, feel nothing deeply, and lose interest in difficult questions about God.”
2. Move into excess with food, exercise, or alcohol.
3. Get busy.
4. Work hard to keep God happy by obeying all the rules in hopes to earn His favor.

My expectation is that everything will go just as I planned, growing up and to the right, success – only success. My reality can be different. Projections aren’t met. My weight is the same. I wasn’t picked for the promotion. Not only can I choose among the four pain-reducing strategies above, but sometimes I blame God for not delivering on what He never promised. It’s like when my kids say that I told them we could get ice cream, and I never said that. God doesn’t promise me that my expectations will become my realities. He has something far better, far other, far different in mind.

When my expectations aren’t met, something much bigger is taking place.

As I’ve wrestled with prying my worth away from my work, and as I try to see beyond my unmet expectations, I remember that God has bigger plans for me, plans that aren’t my own, plans that are a gift. God is working behind the scenes in ways my brain cannot understand to do good things I cannot imagine. And sometimes He uses my unmet expectations and discouragement to fulfill His purpose.

Yes, God wants to bless us. Yes, God delights to give us the desires of our hearts. Yes, God cares about our happiness. But more than anything else, He wants these things for us:

1. To encounter Him, the real, living, wild-like-fire, expectation-breaking, wind-swept, adventurous, encouraging, present and personal God.

Throughout His Word, God shows Himself as a relational God. He met Moses through a burning bush and then personally accompanied His children through the desert for 40 years. God sent His one and only Son Jesus to walk among, live with, teach, heal, and love His people. It’s clear that God wants us to encounter Him.

2. To be restored so that we can become more and more like His Son, not to become carbon-copies of Jesus, but to become the Jill or Susan or Amy or [enter your name here] that God has created us to be. When we are transformed, we don’t become more milquetoast and bland, we become more alive, more passionate, more joyful, and more hopeful versions of ourselves.

Becoming Christ-like is the result of freedom from sin. Romans 6:14 makes me want to shout hoo-rah, “For sin shall no longer be your master, because you are not under the law, but under grace.” What could make us more fully alive than getting rid of legality and living in freedom?

3. To be in community so that we can sharpen one another. He wants us to learn from and teach each other, to see His work in others and for them to see what He’s doing in us, to minister to those around us and to be ministered to, to love and to be loved, and to serve and to be served.

Over and over, God calls us to live this community-life, united under the purpose of glorifying God. Community is important to and created by God.

God’s goal isn’t to meet all of my expectations. His plans are far loftier than my earthly aspirations.

Unmet expectations are actually a gift when the discouragement pulls me closer to God. Crabb sums up the goal of the Christ-follower this way, “It is not primarily about getting saved out of hell and into heaven. It is not primarily about living a certain way that creates fewer problems and makes us feel better about ourselves and our lives. It is about knowing Jesus… and glorifying God.”

In my story, I wrestled with God, and I kept coming back to the truth that nothing I desired or achieved could ever compare with the great gift of knowing Him. Simply knowing Him, the God of the Universe, my Creator, and the Author and Perfector of my faith is more than enough. And it took unmet expectations to lead me to this truth.

Learning that I wasn’t the writer I thought I was back in the my sophomore English class was a gift. The discouragement of a B led me to put in more effort, to study the craft, and to practice it well. We don’t need to get upset when our expectations go unmet. Instead, let’s rejoice in the gift that draws us close to Him so we can glorify the God who loves us so.

Like what you read today? If so, consider subscribing by entering your email in the box in the top right corner. If you’re already a subscriber, thank you! Please consider sharing this post with someone who could use encouragement today.