"Expectancy"... without "expectation"

As the Advent season looms we prepare to participate in a season of "expectancy". Although the reality for many, the words, "anxiety", "anger", "disappointment", or "fear" sound more accurate. Expectancy is difficult when you've been single for too many years and can't shake the desire to be married. Expectancy gets hard when you and your spouse just can't conceive and the frustration overwhelms. Suffocating financial debt, addiction, whatever it may be, the holiday season for some only seems to make the pain worse.

And if you find yourself there right now, I surely do not claim to have the answer that's going to allow it all to make sense... although I do have a lingering suspicion. One that has been relevant to me and my life and it comes into play throughout all seasons. I wonder if some of the pain that we're experiencing comes not from a mentality of "expectancy", but from "expectation." The two words may not seem different enough to make this a big deal, but even if my semantics are not 100% accurate, just play along long enough to catch my point.

Expectancy carries with it a wide-eyed unassuming sense of hope. With expectancy, you put your agenda aside and you pray against faulty presumptions that will taint your experience of reality. Expectancy is what the prophet Isaiah was asking of Israel when he said, "prepare the way of the Lord, make straight in the desert a highway for our God." (Isaiah 40:3) Expectancy carries a sense that everything belongs in the picture and even the most frustrating of circumstances have a chance at redemption.

And expectation?
Expectation is a pungent belief that something will occur in a specific way. Expectation is the seemingly unstoppable undertow of a culture consumed by its ideas of consumerism and coming out on top. Expectation occurs when I compare my unique story with that of someone else. Expectation will inevitably disappoint, leave one frustrated, and miserably anxious.

I think the idea of "The Stockdale Paradox" explained in Jim Collins' Good to Great gets at the difference well. Admiral Jim Stockdale was the highest ranking US military officer in the "Hanoi Hilton" POW camp during the height of the Vietnam War. In the book, author, Jim Collins is interviewing him regarding how he was able to sustain life through the torturous POW camp...

Collins: Who didn't make it out?
Stockdale: Oh, thats easy. The optimists.
Collins: The optimists? I don't understand...
The optimists. Oh they were the ones who said, 'We're going to be out by Christmas.' And Christmas would come, and Christmas would go. Then they'd say, 'We're going to be out by Easter.' and Easter would come, and Easter would go. and then Thanksgiving, and then it would be Christmas again. And they died of a broken heart.
Stockdale: This is a very important lesson. You must never confuse faith that you will prevail in the end-which you can never afford to lose-with the discipline to confront the most brutal facts of your current reality, whatever they might be.

In light of that, coming into a situation with expectations, which we all do, is often not coming into the situation with a good sense of reality. Expectations often carry with them the illusion that I am in control. In transitioning from a sense of expectation to expectancy, I must die to my desire to be in control of a situation.
So much easier to think through and write about than for me to actually allow it to take place. But with expectancy, join me this season in seeking the wide-eyed hope that God is bigger and capable of doing more than we could ever ask or imagine.

Comments

[Makeesha Fisher]

so very profoundly true and wise and beautiful. Thank you for this! :)

[Wes Roberts]

...that's powerful writing!

...thank you!!!

...more...please?!? :-)

[Maria]

Thank you -- I think this is an important insight for me to grapple with in this season.

[bjk]

expectancy without demanding......

[jim]

this is wonderful...thanks.