Perfectly Reasonable Expectations

I stared at the end of semester survey with a glazed expression, a bent aching back and very little will.  The only reason I was filling it out was because it kept popping up when I logged into the college portal and it was slowly driving me crazy. The third question was "What could you as a student have done better?" I felt a little ache inside me as I reflected on my journey through this class. While everyone else in the room had steadily plodded through, never asking questions during lectures and always arriving to class early and prepared, I had put my awkward insecurity on prominent display, skidding into the classroom with stinky armpits and a haze of exhaustion, five minutes late after changing clothes in the car, losing my flash drive halfway through the semester, forgetting my portfolio and always always always asking poor Claudia to repeat herself. I wincingly thought about all of the lectures I missed for my kids and spring break. I cringed as I thought of all of the assignments Claudia had extended deadlines for me. And my answer surpised me.

I wrote "I refuse to be hard on myself. The very act of enrolling in this class was one of monumental courage for me. I spent 21 years avoiding education after not finishing high school. I think I did well."

 And just like that God redeemed the really horrible terrible no good semester of high school that has haunted me all these years.  I'm sooooo glad for this experience because Claudia showed me the proper balance of grace and expectations. She taught with humor and gentle strength. Yes, I'm just so thankful... and I'm glad I did the survey because the other six questions were all about her and I had all good things to say.
I've had a really amazing weekend with my three daughters. They are literally my best friends in the world and I love sharing life with them. It's just amazing to me that God sent them to me. I'm not even kidding, they're willing to eat fancy cheese and watch chick flicks for days. What if God had given me hyper kids that ran around the house screaming and pummeling each other? I don't know what I'd do. My cup runneth over. We went to church today which feels so good after a long break, although we had a come to Jesus meeting afterwards about appropriate attire. 

This morning at church and I had some rocks in my gut but it was good. It was solid. God used the first words to prick my heart and he didn't stop the whole hour. Some of the real highlights were when I was on my broken record prayer of how to trust people and God said to me that trusting in anyone except him was bound to lead to disappointment and I was like oh yeah I forogt you told me that ten million times! And then when I was listing off things that had me all tangled up, He said "hey, you gotta walk the walk, you can't just throw a fit and ask someone else to do all of the hard things." And I conceded that this was not the first time He had told me such things. I went down to pray with sweet Rosie. I told her I have this super unique problem of listening to God, understanding what He's asking of me and then walking away and doing something completely stupid in the heat of the moment in direct contrast to the original plan. I don't think she found it remotely unique, possibly borderline boring if Rosie could ever be bored, which I doubt. So she prayed over me with such wisdom and faith that I felt really optimistic about my problem. And she always ends with this shining light in her eyes and says "please find me when God answers this prayer! I get so excited when people tell me how He took care of it." And that request means something to me because I've hunted her down and told her how He answered before. And it's always unexpectedly perfect. Which reminds me of my funny work stories.

My atheist coworker likes to heckle me about my faith and politics but particularly why I don't pray about things when I'm whining. Like, why isn't the man upstairs listening to me and making the path before me into a golf green. I've always told her I do pray, the answers are just kinda funny and snarky and not what I have in mind so I tend to try not to pray anything super stupid. She didn't really know what I meant until one whiny day while I pittered on about how stinky the clerk was, she suggested I pray that he would shower on Mondays before work, which I stupidly pronounced to be a great idea. 

When I was about halfway through that prayer God replied with "Why don't you make better use of your prayer time by praying for your coworker who had the serious car accident and then pray that you learn to love the clerk better?" 

I felt the sting but wanted to share the humble pie so I passed that little gem of a reply on to the "genius" who suggested the prayer. Her reply was "Touche." 

A few weeks later she suggested I pray that God would send my flash drive back to me. I rolled my eyes and asked her what she thought He'd say. She acted affronted and said "well do you have audience with the man upstairs or not?" I said of course I do and as I've told you, I'm not always in a mood to be humbled. My prediction is that God will say to me "Elizabeth, this lost flash drive is a great lesson for you to learn to be disciplined and organized and to rely fully on me when you start feeling the tunnel vision coming on due to stress that you never should have put yourself through." Again my friend shrugged and laughed and agreed that this was likely the case but as she walked away she said, "Hey it's not like you hate the guy, you just wish he'd shower, you'd think the man upstairs could have a little pity." 

And if there's one thing in this life I've learned, it's that God is not a pitying God. He made us and he literally knows what we are made of and it's pretty amazing stuff. I can honestly say that I could make it through this season of unwashed coworkers and lost flash drives without God's help. Gasp. What I will not make it through, is forgiving my husband and trusting God to help him forgive me. I will not make it through momming without my God. I cannot do friendships without Him. I am incapable of escaping depression without him. I will not ever properly forgive msyelf for all of my failures without Him. Cannot do it. You want to talk about getting wrapped around the axel? It's trying to do all of that stuff without His infinite wisdom and perfect balance of grace and perfectly reasonable expectations.