EXPECTATIONS

From early 2019 I developed an interest in mental health for myself. I would encounter the words “lower your expectations” displayed on literatures and spoken by those who knew its meaning. Well, I brushed it off as nonsense, there’s no way a Kenyan sister, brother, father, mother, daughter or son gonna expect nothing from their natives, No. And I won’t speak of expectations we peg on our spouses/ boyfriends & girlfriends.

On spousal expectations, I had ranked numero uno, yes number 1 in the recent past.

What about believers? No way. How can we expect nothing from that dada or that ndugu when storm ceases not? That moment when we want to say “I am blessed of the Lord” and only a murmur emanates from within! Those times that they got to come through as children of love, they gotta donate that love that they represent from the father, ama? No, Kwa kanisa, we gotta be our brothers keepers, right?

How about the ones who refer to you as “my son”, “my daughter”, they gotta come through, right?

You see the only hope that can not disappoint is the one we lay upon God, even if to us He might seem to have “disappointed us by not granting our wants, He has something up His sleeve for our needs.

He is that faithful. You and I; our faithfulness and trust are limited, circumstantial and even conditional. We’re human and so we shall remain. Falling short each day.

Many years ago, In my days of ignorance I remember blaming a lady whom I was entrusted to for my backsliding, ati she didn’t follow up with me, many years I blamed a family for spoiling my chances of seeing the walls of a university, some years back I also cried and avoided sisterhood when a lady made a statement “I want to take my time before I get married that I will not keep bugging you people with prayer requests of ooh my husband this, ooh my husband that” my expectations on a sister in Christ was “she gotta uphold me in prayer” period! We blame because we expect.

Entitlement it was! Sometimes we expect them to be of our aid since they’re our tribesmen, because we’re women or men, we’re relatives! No one owes us nothing.

A therapist once asked me “Emily, what if they never will?” Yes, your relatives may never treat you or see you in the manner that you yearn them to. The believers may never see your pain or walk with you in that journey, so what? They too have their journeys. And by the way, these expectations are mostly caused by the dysfunctions we drag along as we keep dwelling on earth, the ones we’ve refused to notice and heal from.

Currently the lesson on lowering my expectations hit so hard and glaring. When we don’t hear God sometimes He Drums it, at times he hammers it right inside. I choose to learn and obey.

Expectations when unmet:

-Blocks you from sighting opportunities around you.

-Magnifies the vices that you’ll see no good thing in that human; it kind of gives you a dirty lens when you view that fellow believer, Dads & mums in church, husband, wife, siblings and friends. Yaani it distorts your view kabisa.

-Deny us growth

-Suck life out of us

-Limit our thinking, we only reach where the pain starts.

-Create a huge bridge since you’re still bitter but for how long my friend? It’s such a barrier.

And in my seasons I got to learn that expectation is the mother to;

-Bitterness

-Hatred,

-Malice

-Unexplainable pains

-Bad blood amongst families and believers.

-Sometimes broken relationships… etc.

And the one who sires them is known as Mr. Entitlement! It is noble for some expectations to be met by those around us but it is not compulsory. Sometimes a father withholds something from his own child, though s/he wants it. Sometimes a mum lets the toddler do the walking on their own, in the fall and rise the baby masters the art. Sometimes we worship many gods unknowingly in the name of expectations; since we let them inhibit our beings. We become adulterous for nothing in our days of ignorance.

Romans 13:8 “Owe no man anything, but to love one another: for he that love that another hath fulfilled the law.”

We can rejoice, too, when we run into problems and trials, for we know that they help us develop endurance. And endurance develops strength of character, and character strengthens our confident hope of salvation. And this hope will not lead to disappointment. For we know how dearly God loves us, because he has given us the Holy Spirit to fill our hearts with his love. (Romans 5:3-5 NLT)