Resetting Expectations

Throughout much of my life I have not known what to expect. I have never really known how things would turn out or what to presume should be the normal course of events. Rather, I have always reached out and investigated, questioned, and clarified just about everything. I was always the one who read over the syllabus in school and asked the clarifying questions about what everything meant. I was the one who rushed out and bought What to Expect When You Are Expecting the moment we discovered we were pregnant with Addison. Even to this day you will regularly hear me asking questions like “What do you mean?” or “What does that look like?” I have just approached life as something that is full of surprises, well, most of life, that is. When it came to marriage I thought I already knew everything.

When Rachel and I got married I thought I knew how everything would work. Rachel would be a morning person just like me. We would get up early and have intelligent conversations over steaming cups of coffee. When we got home in the evenings, Rachel would greet me warmly and have plenty of energy to continue our morning conversations. Weekends would be spent traversing the great outdoors. We would hammer out every disagreement in fifteen minutes or less, and we would always do it logically. We would be in lock step about how to spend our money, and best of all, we would always be happy because we had each other. I suppose I could go on. I had lots of expectations about marriage, and the biggest one of all was that I expected Rachel to expect what I expected. That all lasted until about the second day of our honeymoon.

It quickly became apparent that Rachel was not a morning person and that neither one of us had tons of energy when we came home in the evenings. Camping for me meant a tent and a backpack but Motel 6 was roughing it for my new bride. We rarely agreed on how to use our money and we struggled to hammer out our disagreements in a logical fifteen minute discussion. The signs were obvious. Rachel did not expect what I expected, and I did not expect that.

We have been married almost seventeen years, and I am happy to report that we have both survived the expectation shock that set in shortly after we were married. There was the one incident in which I thought it was a good idea to make cappuccino at 5 a.m. in our small apartment. I almost died in that one, but in all other respects we have made it through nicely. What’s our secret? I don’t know if we have one really. We have had our bumps and hiccups along the way, but one thing has helped us through. We decided early on to reset our expectations. Early on in our marriage we came to the realization that the only person we could expect anything from was ourselves, and that this expectation was that we would submit to the other person.

I know. It sounds crazy but it is the truth. We (more accurately “I”) came to the realization that most of our expectations were rooted in what we expected from the other person. The problems arose when the other person did not meet our expectations. When the other person did not do what we expected trouble was not far behind, usually brought about by some form of a power struggle aimed at getting what we wanted from one another. We quickly found that we were not very good at managing one another so we started trying to manage ourselves. We began to look for ways to give rather than to get. We sought ways to put one another first, not worrying about whether we got anything in return. Amazingly, when we did this, things smoothed out and marriage was a lot richer. Sure, there were still bumps in the road. We still have bumps along the way. They pretty much all have my name on them, and I can personally attest that they arise because I stop giving and start trying to get. I have trouble letting go of the idea that Rachel is there for me rather than living out the principle that I am there for her. I am by nature self-centered and selfish. I don’t even have to try hard. Over the years, I have found that I can live for her rather than for myself. I have discovered that doing this requires much intentionality but not where I would have imagined it. I find that I live for her the more I seek to live like Christ.

A fellow traveler,

Blake

What’s my next step?

We encourage you to consider engaging in the following as a way of handing off faith in your family.

Talk about a submissive life:  Submission is a dirty word in our culture but it is a quality that marks the followers of Christ. This week, consider memorizing Ephesians 5.21 as a family. Talk about what submission means by considering Jesus as the preeminent example of one who led a submissive life (Mark 10.42-45 and Philippians 2.5-11). Talk about what submission looks like in your own context. You might consider talking as a family about opportunities you have each day to live submitting to the needs of others and what makes this difficult or easy. Conclude your discussions with times of family prayer, asking for the mind of Christ and the grace to live his submissive life.

We encourage you to consider engaging in the following as a way of deepening your own faith.

Clarify expectations:  Many of our marriage difficulties come from the presence of unstated and unmet expectations. When our expectations are unmet we are disappointed and we seek to manage this disappointment by struggling with our spouse in an effort to get them to meet our expectations. This week consider spending some time surfacing your marriage expectations. You might begin by opening your heart to God by offering the prayer of the psalmist in Psalm 139.23-24. In partnership with God, write down your expectations for family, finances, free time, intimacy, and any other categories you feel are important. After you have surfaced these expectations, spend some time asking God what lies behind these expectations and if they exemplify Jesus’ submissive life. Consider holding these expectations before God, asking him to meet the needs that undergird them, granting you the grace and freedom to live submissively with your spouse.