Tag / expectations

by bcmiller2014

The Plan

She liked to think of herself as a woman of uncertainty, but that wasn’t really true. Sure, she didn’t know what to think about the Bible any more. She wasn’t sure how involved God really was in people’s lives and how much was a matter of perspective, but she was sure of more than she wanted to admit. She was sure that people weren’t primarily numerical and therefore didn’t belong in boxes. That probably applied to God, too. She was also certain she needed to think her own thoughts, make her own decisions and take responsibility for learning how to actually live her life. She didn’t want to survive. She wanted to be fully invested, aware, empowered, and present for all the days before her death. 

The difficulty lay in the fact that she didn’t know how to do this. For a myriad of reasons she’d grown up without acquiring many of the usual inter and intrapersonal skills that usually come with age. She was determined to find a path, though, whether she was late in starting it or not. She decided to brainstorm, and the list of her ideas is as follows:
  1. Take more initiative. Being docile and submissive isn’t always the true path to peace. Speak up when needed, even if it causes conflict. 
  2. When speaking up causes conflict, decide not to embrace the idea that it’s all your fault. Communication is good, even if it’s hard. Just don’t go too far and start flinging blame or cheap shots at people. That’s never okay. 
  3. Notice the good stuff. Maybe even write it down. It’s easy to lose sight of goodness in life when it’s mixed in with the inevitable pain, so work at recognizing kindness. 
  4. Remind yourself that you’re strong.  You don’t need permission to live. 
  5. Be gracious with yourself. Listen to the words you speak over yourself. If you wouldn’t say them to anyone else, don’t say them to yourself, either. If you fail in this, be gracious then, too. Forgive yourself and move forward. Consider coming up with some positive phrases with which to counter the negative ones. This idea makes you want to barf. Find out what that’s about. 
  6. Accept and recognize comfort. Soak it up when it comes. 
  7. Accept and recognize when you are loved. 
  8. Ask for help when you need it, you ninny. Wait. Refer to #5. You lovely woman. Oh, barf. I mean, Oh! Whiskey!
  9. Allow yourself space to heal without condemning yourself for it. If you’d been hit by a train you’d know it was reasonable to take time. You’ve been hit by a train. It just didn’t have wheels on it. 
  10. When you condemn yourself, try affirming yourself instead. Say what you’d say to one of your students. 
  11. Regarding Mom and Dad: They’re probably not going to change. Don’t wait for it. Work on yourself. Give up on the idea that you’ll ever be parented, even now, in a way that is deeply edifying. Love them where they are, how they are, without expectation. Find your security somewhere else. (This might be where knowing God loves you would be really helpful. It’s unclear why you haven’t been able to get that after all this time, and that makes you angry. Ask Tom about that.)
  12. When you’re up for phone conversations put boundaries on them. Start with five minutes. Go to 15 but not more than 20. 
  13. When they cut you off while you’re trying to tell them about your life, ask them why they did that. Guage their receptiveness. If that conversation goes nowhere, stop trying to tell them about your life. 
  14. When they’re upset about your boundaries, keep them anyway and don’t apologize for having them. You’re bound to empathize. Go for a walk afterward, or go up on the roof.  Yell into a pillow. Call a trustworthy friend and talk about it. Warn the friends ahead of time that you may need to be reminded that boundaries are healthy for everyone. Look at happy animal pictures on Pinterest. 
  15. When Mom and Dad don’t understand and you can’t explain, tell them you can’t explain and you’re sorry they’re in pain, but avoid shifting blame onto yourself to try to make them feel better. Leave the loose ends when needed. Write a poem about it afterward, or refer to #14. 
  16. After having any basically meaningless conversations with Mom and Dad, having stayed within your boundaries, hang up, eat a piece of chocolate and congratulate yourself for a job well done. Contribute $5 toward your next great pair of shoes. 
  17. Cry when it comes. 
  18. Breathe. 
  19. Invest in things that help bring you to life. Take art classes or poetry classes. Be brave and apply for that MFA program.  Be responsible to your day job but don’t allow it to rob you of fulfillment. 
  20. If the MFA program doesn’t accept you, don’t stop writing. 
  21. Keith: This requires a separate list. Work on that as it comes.  Remember that you love each other and don’t let society dictate your “normal.”  
That’s as far as she got, but it was a start. She was already used to laying on an ice pack for long stretches of time to help her back. Certainly she could implement this. With help. And grace for flubs. In fact, when she screwed up and did something wrong she determined to stand up and walk across the street to a coffee shop and get some tea if it was during business hours. If it was late, she’d write “I love me” in Word on her iPad, and make each of the letters a different color. 



by bcmiller2014

The Lie that She was Small

Her mother said she only ever
could rely on family, 
misty-eyed recollecting
isolation, the inescapable 
feeling she was a 
smaller species than others
she had met.  Her mother was 
taught by her parents, of course,
both of them djins released
from bottles, booming 
names with cloud-trumpets
and opinions pulled from sandstorms.
Magic was full bright but
sadly mathematical with them.
They felt small, too, probably 
taught by their parents. 

Their daughter
was different.  Of all the 
DNA combinations 
possible from two tempests,
her recipe twisted around 
itself and dreamed.  She was 
flowers in a music garden, white
eyelet and patent leather shoes,
unruly red hair, magic 
filtered soft through the evening.
That was her destiny, poor girl.  
To them, she was smaller still, though 
she could bellow a pipe organ
beautifully. In the end it was all djin
air and it made its way home 
to the bottle.

by bcmiller2014

Expectancy

I’ve never been pregnant, and I’ve never even wanted to be. I’m not saying that’s good.  It’s just true. I have a dear friend who’s having a baby in February though, and for some reason, after all the friends and family members who’ve had babies, this one has gotten me thinking. It’s too late for me and I haven’t changed my mind, but I’ve started thinking about expectancy.

I’ve thought a lot already about expectations. These are almost always uniquely negative things. They tend to be false, unfair, disappointing, and relationship-killing. They place strict boundaries around what we want or think we need from others. They limit another person to being a particular way or doing a certain thing.  They don’t leave room for anything other than what is expected.

I actually ran into this as a major personal issue when I was younger, and I was expected to have a child or two or three within a few years of marriage.  Doing that is a great thing for a whole lot of people, but it wasn’t for me. When I failed to meet this expectation, assumptions were made about the reasons for it. Emotional barriers were thrown up by people who did and didn’t know me, because I was unusual in this regard and that made me unpredictable and mysterious. People didn’t know what to think of me. They didn’t know what to expect, and that was an impediment to our relationship. I think it may have made people feel insecure.  Sometimes they’d even assume that I must not approve of people who did have children, and that I’d placed judgments on them. I hadn’t at all. For a whole bunch of reasons I just didn’t have the emotional or physical resources to engage in being a mother, myself.

Expectancy is different in that it leaves room for the unexpected. We can be expectant of something good without defining exactly what we think that must be. It’s about waiting for something, and not being quite sure exactly what it is that we’re going to get.

My friends who are expecting a baby boy are absolutely thrilled to meet their son. They get adorably giddy at the thought of getting to know who he is. Therein lies the difference. They haven’t decided who he’s going to be or what he’s going to do. I’m sure they probably have some expectations about parenting that will turn out to be false because they’ve never done it before and they’ve imagined it to be a particular way. Knowing these dear people, they’ll work through that and get back into reality. But right now, in the third trimester of the pregnancy, they’re expecting a son and leaving all the doors and windows of possibility open to him. He’s going to be a remarkable little human and that’s about all anyone knows about him right now. But expectancy is in the air. They’re longing with all their hearts to find out who this little person is going to be, and that leaves room for him to be himself.

Expectations aren’t helpful. They disappoint, distract, and disconnect. Expectancy is different because it is hope that doesn’t try to control outcomes. It may dream a little, but in the end it makes room for whatever is coming to be whatever it is.

As Christmas approaches, I think about the traditional story. I think about the person of Jesus as described in the Bible. He was executed because he did not meet expectations. He didn’t overthrow the Romans. He hung out with crooks and prostitutes and liars. The only people he ever really reamed out were the religious leaders of the day, because they made God inaccessible and placed unbearable burdens on everyday people. He was not who people expected him to be. That didn’t mean he wasn’t good. That didn’t mean that people weren’t onto something when they were hopefully anticipating the coming of the Messiah. He ended up being all about loving God and loving each other. He represented God here on earth, which means God is all about love, too, and that’s something worth getting excited about.

Expectancy waits for revelation and lets go of pre-definition.  It releases control and embraces acceptance. It puts us in the role of recipients instead of demigods, insistent on our own ways. At Christmas we’re waiting for a baby to be revealed.  If we are wise we’re not waiting for a predefined man to show up and meet our every desire like a Chippendale-Warrior-Santa-Claus, slave to our whims and fantasies.  It might be fun at first but we’d tire of him eventually, as we do of anything plastic that runs on batteries.  We’d almost certainly muck up what’s good by trampling over others’ needs while trying to meet our own.  None of those stories about genies in lamps turn out well in the long run.

I think I’d rather anticipate a baby, and gradually discover everything that is delightful and unexpected about him. I’d rather have a God I can’t control, especially if he’s willing to show up helpless and humble. As he and I take time to get to know each other, he might just turn out to be someone I’d like to know.