Creating Community

Expections are inevitable. You expect things of yourself, other people expect things of you, and you expect things of other people. It’s difficult to walk around without feeling the expectations all around.

Covey talks of these paradigms when your expectations actually change your behavior. When your expectations of others change how you treat certain situations or the people specifically. You look through your lens of life and begin to predict certain behaviors and act as if they have already happened in the way you predicted.

I am fighting through hell with my own, but it’s a quiet fight. My expectations are not positive, and my hurt is surfacing. I have identified them, but doing something about them is more confusing and difficult than just figuring out what they are.

I was asked to define my paradigms and couldn’t think of a single positive one.

This fight is a long time coming and I am grateful for the people who understand this and stick around me.

In John, Martha reassures Jesus of her faith that God will provide for everything we ask for. She is looking at a relatively bleak situation, a dead brother. She is asking that He would breathe life into him again, and that Lazarus would rise from the dead. All she had to do was believe.

This idea of “all we have to do is believe” deserves more weight than it carries at surface value. What is believing? Is there a level of “belief” that one must achieve before we’re able to perform these great and mighty things? Is this faith? More, how do we get more of this?

How many accounts were kept out of the Bible of Martha feeling doubt?

“I know what I’ve heard. I know I’m not crazy.” I am feeling doubt. My doubt comes in that my situation seems bleak. Things aren’t looking good and I don’t see the light at the end of the tunnel. I don’t see how to come out of this. I am more worried that I misheard or misinterpreted, and that the fruits of my mistake are my present situation.

The other world exists. The Matrix shows this fantastic metaphor for the other world and what it promises and what we’re capable and called to in it.

And yet, we are still unwilling to step into it. Maybe we do every now and again, maybe we dip our toes into that body of water. We’re seldom anxious to dive off the dock into it.

Controlled loss vs a non-losing win.

It may be a loss, and in fact, we’re told that it’s a loss. But it’s a loss that we can take the blows as we see fit, or at least we can entertain that we’re in control of the blows. There is absolutely nothing to win other than the satisfaction of feeling like you’re telling the opposition where and when it can run you over like, when/where it can destroy you.

In a non-losing win, you don’t have that control. You don’t know when the negative is coming. All you know is that you will face opposition but we don’t care about that so much. The other thing we know is that we are promised a real win. We KNOW we will win. Not tomorrow, not on His coming, now.

I am finding difficulty in handing over the reigns, in giving up the controlled loss. I don’t know why I entertain that I will be better off that way, but I seem to love the idea of telling the opposition they’re fine destroying me.

Stepping out of the metaphor and into real life, into my today, is hard for me. If my hand is stuck in the cookie jar because I won’t let go of the cookie, what must I do to let go of the cookie and slide my hand out? How high, my lack of trust. How significant, my lack of faith.

Gears are almost useless when alone. They can be on the perfectly oiled machine, attached so some astronomically efficient axis, spinning with almost no energy loss. The perfectly grooved gear means so little when it’s not attached to some other mechanism. Without it’s teeth meshing with other gears, it accomplishes nothing.

If you accomplish 100% of what you set out to do, would it make a difference? Would it leave you feeling satisfied?

If your gears are detached from one another, it’s difficult to make a difference. Its almost impossible.

My gears aren’t fully separate, but they are certainly skipping. The skips are my mistakes, my struggles. I am not feeling much fulfillment in what I’ve been doing as I focus on improving the efficiency of each individual gear and not the whole machine.  I have worked specifically at improving my “vocational” gear only to find myself looking at something similar to what I walked away from. I am working at my “spiritual” gear, trying to figure out how to actually have a relationship with Him.

Those two gears are separate, and it’s discouraging and frustration. I will not quit but I am sure as hell feeling the tire from a long battle.

Somewhere between listening for His voice and acting out life lies some sort of no mans land. It really isn’t a no mans land, but a trusting man’s land. A faithful man’s land.

This area isn’t baron, it looks nothing like the desert wastelands we see on National Geographic. It’s almost exactly the opposite.

It’s an inundation of choice. It’s a vast world of constant opportunity and significant payoff.

I am tired from swimming. I treat the trusting man’s land as if it’s a no man’s land and I am waiting to hear from Him on where to go, what to do, and how to behave. It’s easy for me to think I’ll do what he tells me when I’m seldom asked to do something. I’d take more responsibility if I knew my efforts would be fruitful. I’d make more decisions if I had a passionate direction to go. I’d work my tail off towards some goal, if I could see the red tape on the finish line.

I’d actually start moving if I had the faith and trust that He’ll be the snow plow in front of me, the shield behind me, and the great conductor making the world dance to the music He’s playing through me.

There seems to be a buzz in the air, a “this year is going to be different,” or at least a “I will think about looking at the possibility of making this year different.” One way or the other, the new year seems to motivate us to make a change. Something about “1/1″ seems to even out the odds, make the opportunities seem not so far off, clean the slate.

We seem to wait expectantly for the new year to decide to make a change in ourselves. We look for some milestone, some pretty on paper way to say “this is when the change will happen.”

This year, I have made no resolutions. I haven’t even thought about what I would change. It seems almost weird to say, and maybe I am avoiding issues in myself that would look good on paper. I would like to see what 2010 has to offer, and am excited to look back at the year and say “Wow, look what He’s done.” 2009 brought one crazy ride, and I expect a strikingly similar 2010. My goal is to hold on tight and never let go. I feel the roller coaster about to get to the “fun part.”