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Sunday, March 27, 2011

Hope, Expectations & Learning

Over this last five weeks I was blessed to meet some wonderful people from a production & film crew for a pilot show for HGTV(Home & Garden Television). My mind started to get excited of the thought of this being the answer to everything, finally we would be able to get help removing the removable stress in our lives. As time went by, I started to lay all my hope in them being here to rescue us, I should say me,  from the basement. The basement that was a never ending work in progress. My expectations grew as well as things progressed along.

We spent four days at the end of the filming in an RV, that I had rented from my work, in the parking lot of Walmart after prearranging it with them.

God used this for many blessings over those days. My family was able to meet a Gentlemen who was an engineer for the Military & his son is in the military. He had lost his wife a couple of years back, she was a law professor.  He found his world drop out from underneath him when she past & has been living in his vehicle since then. We knew when we first met him before he shared that he had a story to be told as he speaks like a well educated polite man. We all learned that for every homeless person there is a story to be told.

We also spent those four days without electricity as there was no place to plug the RV in. My Children's DSs, laptops & phones ran out of charge on the first day, so entertainment was back to the basics & left us with lots of time to talk.

We returned home to our place for the big reveal. We went through the house and were able to see what they had done in each of  the rooms for the first time. I love almost all of what they had done to the house.

I did realize that I was leaning on hope that comes from this world & worldly expectations that were not reality & were self serving to get what I wanted. My expectations and that of the show clashed. I had formed this idea in my head of what doing this meant for us but it wasn't an expectation of reality, so when it became a problem it was soully left the responsibility of my unrealistic expectations. I could not blame anything or any one but myself.

I found myself faced with the reality of what would be left for me to deal with and it didn't align with my expectations. I found myself grieving my expectations. I found myself in a place of brokenness one more time as I felt over whelmed. I fell to my knees in tears asking for Gods forgiveness one more time.

I realized a day later how I had sinned, I had laid my hope on false hope of this world, my hope should be at the cross where Jesus payed the price for me & my sins and one the war to set me free, but instead I had laid them at the feet of this world. I had asked Jesus to forgive me for running from him to the world to fill my needs.

Psalm 46
Psalm 25:2-4

I now ask when we have expectations do they align with what reality is, when there is a problem is it a problem because our expectations don't align with reality, is it a problem because our expectations don't line up with God's will for our lives.


Do we lay our hope on things of this world and put them in the place of the Hope Jesus gave us in his Crucification & Resurrection. 
?