June 16th

What bothers me about the saying “Expectations are pre-meditated resentments” is my understanding that expectations are inevitable.  For example, I expected my husband to behave toward me much as my father had toward my mother, to behave toward our children much as my father had toward me.  My sense of “how a husband/father acts” was based on what I had seen growing up.  As it turned out, my husband did not always act according to the model my father set.  Sometimes the differences did not bother me at all; but occasionally, when my expectations were not met, I was taken aback.  If having expectations is integral to being human and it is likely my expectations will not always be met, am I doomed to disappointment, resentment?
         No.  Once again the Bible and current day life experiences offer us a metaphor to help us deal with the messiness of human life.  Much of Scripture draws on the notion that we need to come to see people in a new Light.  Expectations are rather like cataracts that darken our vision, blind us to the person standing in front of us by suggesting he or she should be like someone we have encountered in the past.  But cataracts can be removed—and once removed, I am able to see more clearly.  The key is to see the expectation for what it is rather than to look through the expectation and allow it to distort my vision.
      According to the song, it takes amazing grace to move from blindness to seeing others for who they are rather than who I expected them to be.  I ask for that amazing grace, for apparently the alternative is a life darkened by disappointment and possibly poisoned by resentment.