Great Expectations

Expectations are the fingers of hoped for emotions that weave their way through our lives. When our expectations are exceeded, we are gloriously excited. When our expectations fall short of what we had hoped, we are disappointed.

There isn’t a person, place, or event that we don’t have an expectation for. When Jeff and I were in pre-marriage counseling, my pastor encouraged us to communicate our expectations for each other. We were in love and while we did talk a lot during our short 3 month engagement, we both came to the marriage with expectations that were never communicated. For instance, I expected that my new, wonderful, adoring husband would wash our vehicles periodically (once a week wasn’t too much to expects, was it?). Over the almost 6 years of our marriage, Jeff has washed my car ½ of one time, when I was too tired and pregnant to finish the job, and his pick-up once, including the time he cleaned it for our honeymoon. My expectations have changed on this matter and there are issues that he has had to change his expectations of me as well.

Don’t we all fast forward in our minds to an event coming up? When I do this, I imagine what I am wearing, topics of conversation, weather, my anticipated feelings, my child’s behavior; I can even imagine smells and sounds. In general, I have way more fun thinking about the event than actually being there. I recently heard a speaker refer to these kinds of expectations as pre-memories. My sister, mom, and I were talking about our pre-memories at Christmas time. Nothing is ever rushed, burned, stained, cold, or crying in a pre-memory. The regular happenings in life could never hope to measure up to a fairytale.

As a mother, I have had to lower my expectations so that I don’t live in a constant state of disappointment. Everything takes longer with little ones in tow. From my hair to house cleaning, my life is far from the pre-memories I had when I was looking forward to my first child. As a mom, I regret to say, that I often expect the worst. My expectations require me to carry diaper wipes and 3 extra changes of clothes everywhere I go.

I started thinking about my expectations, and all the intricate hopes and dreams they hold, as I anticipated our recent family vacation. I forced my mind to steer clear of unrealistic pre-memories. I wanted to returned home refreshed, not disappointed. My first step was to clearly communicate my expectations with Jeff. Once we are on the same page, he always tries to make me happy. It wasn’t too difficult of a list to fulfill, from swimming, sharing childcare responsibilities, eating out a few times, and watching at least one episode of “Flip This House”. Everything on the list exceeded my expectations and we had a wonderful time. We even had snow and a perfect sledding hill outside our back door. I couldn’t have asked for more.

Here are a few pictures of the huge amounts of snow we drove through on our drive to and from Klamath Falls. What should be a 4 ½ hour trip took 7 hours each way. We drove slow, took in the scenery and the girls did well (considering).