No Expectations, but Hope.

This cursor on the blank page flashing at me is kind of like this year ahead, 2022.

There’s nothing written yet. The options are endless. Anything can happen.  Sometimes we might feel stuck in our lives, a never-ending cycle of doing the same things over and over. Good things maybe, the right things even, but because of the monotony of it we may “feel” like we are stuck. We’ve lost our joy, maybe lost our bearings and most discouragingly we have lost our hope.

We all need hope. We can’t thrive without it. And I want to thrive this year.

I think 2021 was a year of losing hope for me.  To back it up, we all know how terrible 2020 was. But somehow, we got through it onto the other side. I tried to see the challenges as blessings. The USA college kids were home and got to spend much more time here then they had in years. I had traveled so much across the world and back in 2019 for Mom’s cancer, that I was very content to have to stay put.

But…The wearing of the masks, the canceling of school and social distancing and the fear that was spread across the world and families and homes and supermarkets was tiring. That to me was the worst part. But we made it through. In my mind there was some fanciful thought that 2021 would be different. That the year would start, and life and the world would be back to normal.

But it wasn’t.

And I did not handle that well. I became irritable, angry, depressed even. Not having much hope. As the pandemic continued on it severely effected our business and income and financial trouble was added into that mix, and it was not pretty. To sum it all up, I look back at the first part of 2021 and I was discontent. Somewhere in the middle of the year I felt things changed, I accepted that life was how it was, not any easier but the acceptance came and a few months later I came to the realization, through a conviction, that I had turned into a complaining person.

And I was brought face to face with the reality that we had taught our kids from an early age, not to be complainy and whiney children. We sang songs about doing all things without complaining or grumbling, memorized verses, disciplined for bad attitudes, and really put effort and time into that aspect of developing their character. And God really blessed it and them. (Those that know our kids I’m fairly confident can testify that they are not complainers)

But me… Certainly that can’t be said of me. Here I was doing the opposite of what I had wanted for my kids. I was failing miserably in that. I could give myself excuses, “but life here is hard”, “but that person was rude to me”, “but I’m hungry…crampy…tired…” fill in any blank and there always seems to be a justification in my mind of why it should be ok. But its not. Because not only is it a bad example to my kids and the world around me, it sucks the life and joy out of the home. Everything is a downer.  I had come to realize that, apologized to my family and am setting out on a new course of “trying” to not complain.

 As I thought about the year, with the way 2019, 2020 and 2021 have gone I figured I’m not looking to set any records. Things are going to happen how they happen. So, as I start 2022 there are

No goals.

No Resolutions.

No Declarations.

And definitely, No Expectations.

And its funny how I feel the most hopeful in that. Because from what I have learned in my life the last few years, it is the expectations that really trip me up. I’ve often thought I need to lower my expectations but this year, no. There will be no Expectations.

 Most often it is my mind of how I think things should be. How I think someone should have responded to me. How I see where I am in life and where I thought I would have been and the expectations that surround that. I get caught up in wanting/needing/expecting everything to be just right and I miss the small things. The happiness in the everyday.

So, for 2022

I want to be marked by a content heart and attitude.

I want to be easy on people and myself.

I want to think on the Goodness and Kindness of God

I want to keep a record of the blessings we see tangibly and answers to prayer this year

And I want to write…

Somehow, I feel like I’ve got about 2 years bottled up inside waiting to be typed out. Lots of blank pages with cursors staring at me in 2022.

So cheers to a new year with no expectations, but definitely some hope.