Unexpected Expectations

My Top 3

One of the things that always seem to come up when you’re preparing to do mission work, specifically in another country, is the idea of expectations.  Often times, our expectations of a trip or service project can define our reaction to that trip or action played out in reality.  We can find disappointment is reality didn’t meet or was different from our expectations. 

 I’m not leaving the country… or even the city, but I’ve thought a lot about expectations as I’ve prepared to enter in this season of church planting here in Maryland.  I know my propensity to define church based on my “to-date” experience of church.  I have expectations of people and what ministry might look like with this church plant…I’ve thought a lot about what I think will be hard for me and what I’m excited to grow in. 

 I’ve processed through a lot.  I thought I was preparing for a lot.

 Now, two weeks into official core-team meetings, I’m realizing that perhaps one of the hardest things for me to digest was something that my expectations, my propensities, and my thinking completely missed.  You see, I’m going through a major adjustment and feelings of withdrawal from my church…specifically the young adults ministry I’ve been a part of for several years now. 

 My church plant, interestingly enough has placed me in the middle of many, many families.  There are teens, there are young kids, there are toddlers, and there are babies that are growing in bellies.  There is all this talk of being better parents, taking care of kids, what to do with kids…all of this very important, I recognize that.  By the time I leave our 2.5 hr meeting, I’m really just wanting to be around other singles…less kids…something more relatable…something more comfortable. 

 My issue isn’t with kids persay.  My issue isn’t with family either.  My issue is that I’m uncomfortable.  I’ve been an orphan since I was 14.  The family I do have is not very healthy.  I don’t know what it’s like for a healthy relationship between husband and wife.  I don’t know what it’s like to see parents raise their kids in a healthy environment…and especially not a home that’s committed to the Lord.  Now, I’m with older couples and couples who are my age.  All with kids.  All with each other.  And I’m fighting to swallow the fact that God’s put me in the middle of it all.

 When I step away from my discomfort and look at the situation, I praise God for putting me here.  Not having siblings or parents or a spouse…I really have no idea how or what that is supposed to look like…and this allows me a glimpse…maybe an opportunity to grow - especially if, Lord willing, God gives me a family of my own one day. 

 When I’m sitting in my discomfort I freak out because I have no siblings or parents or a spouse.  I’m alone in that respect with the church plant and I’m surrounded by people who have one of the things I’ve always wanted - family.  It’s hard and uncomfortable.  I nearly hate it.  And by the end of our meetings I long to find others like me - my single friends, my independent friends…I long to be back in my comfortable singles ministry where I can, to some extent, forget these things that have already started haunting me 2 weeks into the plant. 

 It’s funny - the road God brings us down.  This is hard, and I won’t sugar coat it and make it seem like I’m thrilled to be embracing this struggle right now.  But I do trust in God’s sovereignty and I’m also convinced that it’s usually those things that make us the most internally uncomfortable that point to an area in our lives that needs God to gracefully start working. 

 Unexpectedly, today…the place for me seems to lie somewhere in the middle of a bunch of young Christian families.  I wasn’t expecting this struggle.  But now that I’m in it…I can’t help but expect God to work in it…

we’ll see what happens.