Post-it notes line the wall above my friend Matt’s bed. Scrawled on each square of paper is a quote – some spoken by famous folk, others uttered by the ordinary in his life. One morning, about a month after returning from Bosnia, I spent an hour sitting on Matt’s bed, reading the words of wisdom he’d collected.
“Expectations are premeditated resentments”
The paper was the same size as the other quotes. The color was identical too. It was written in the same masculine yet neat handwriting as the others. But this post-it note was different. Its words pierced. They stung. They burned. They made me want to throw up.
“Expectations are premeditated resentments”
Reading those words stirred feelings of anger, shame, disappointment and confusion. Yet in the midst of all that I was feeling, I knew those words were true.
But there was still a problem.
I agreed that expectations are premeditated resentments. However, I couldn’t understand where my faith and understanding of the natural order of the universe had been exchanged for a set of unrealistic expectations. I just wanted love to prevail and God to show up. Was that too much to ask?
Now, six months down the road, I think I’m gaining a little of that 20/20 vision hindsight always seems to provide. Or maybe it’s not so much 20/20 vision as it is simply a new angle. It’s kind of like when you’re driving in the car and you have to keep turning the map to figure out where the heck you’re going. Sure, you could leave it with the north side pointed toward the dashboard, but you’re going to end up cocking your head off to one side trying to figure it all out, so you might as well just turn the map.
So here I am. My map has started turning. I’m getting my head around the lay of the land and realizing that maybe things aren’t what they seem. I’m coming to terms with the notion that maybe my expectations weren’t so off the mark, but perhaps the angle from which I was looking at things has been a little off. Could it really be possible that what I was seeing was not what was really there?
Look at this picture. What do you see?
Fog hanging thick over a body of water, surrounded by distant bluffs and mountains? A dirt road and a sign directing sojourners somewhere off the path?
If I were making a map of what I saw, those are the things that I’d draw. And that, my friends, is what the map of a crapshoot would look like.
There’s no body of water in that picture. It’s clouds, and beneath those clouds lies a city. The capital of a nation. And that sign? It’s supposed to direct passers-by to a waterfall. You can’t even see the waterfall in the picture. That doesn’t really matter though, because the sign is pointing the wrong direction in the first place.
My map would have had the mountains right and the road right. That’s it. And that’s life. What you see isn’t really there. There’s also more than what you can see. And even the most certain things, like, let’s say road signs, aren’t necessarily even pointing in the right direction. Or as I learned in Bosnia, they may be missing extremely pertinent information.
It’s a total crapshoot. You can go off what you see. Or try working off experience. Maybe you prefer to lean on what you know to be grace and truth. Whatever floats your boat, give it a whirl, but as far as I can tell, it’s still going to be a crapshoot.
And there’s never going to be a perfect map. I would have gotten the mountains and road right on the map of the picture, and I’m trying to believe again that love and God will be consistent land marks on the map of this crapshoot I now fondly call my life.
The note makes me wonder what the difference between expecation and hope is and how they are different when the future doesn’t become what we expected/hoped.