The first question I prayed through is What are you anticipating?
Some things are really easy (and exciting!) to anticipate
eagerly. I know right now I’m eagerly anticipating Christmas. I KNOW Christmas
will be amazing with my family. That’s something I experience year after year,
and I always look forward to celebrating. For me though, anticipating is a
struggle. I’m very grounded in my expectations, and I often temper them to
avoid disappointment. Nate and I are polar opposites in this way! I really
struggle, because I’ve conditioned myself “not to get my hopes up.”
Right now we are in the advent season, which is about
anticipating the celebration of Christ’s birth, but also the anticipation of
Christ coming back some day. That’s worth getting your hopes up for!
As I look back over my life, there were absolutely moments
where I thought “well, this is a terrible, pointless experience.” Not true!
Almost all of those moments I can look back to as a moment that God used in a
big way. Not getting my “dream job” completely changed our family’s trajectory
– for the better. If you would have told me that four years ago when I was
sobbing and begging Nate to just let me go work at Taco Bell because I’d never
amount to anything professionally (yeah, that really happened), I would have
laughed in your face. I actually remember saying the words, “Nothing good will
ever come out of this!” I know imagine that moment with God saying after that,
“Challenge accepted!”
As I’ve grown in my faith, I have gotten better at eagerly
anticipating God’s work in my heart and in my circumstances, but it’s still a
big area of growth for me.
The picture below is one of my favorite pictures, ever
taken. I know that probably seems ridiculous, but I’ll explain why. This
picture was taken during the hardest month of my life. Right after Emmarie was
born, it felt like everything I knew was being ripped from my hands with job
changes, house changes, church changes, and more. And my instinct in that
moment was to clench my fists and hold as tightly to everything that I could.
To mourn losses. To permanently attach chips to my shoulder.
But as we put the For Sale sign up, we thought back to when
we bought the house (only a year and half earlier), and I had excitedly posed
with the “Sold!” sign. I don’t remember if I suggested it or Nate did, but we
agreed we needed the same type of picture as we closed a chapter. I walked up
to the sign, and Blakely followed. As Nate got ready to take the picture, he
said, “GET EXCITED!”
And we did.
What if in the middle of all of our broken moments, we took
a picture? Maybe not literally, but just paused in the moment to soak it in…
and to eagerly anticipate how God will work through this, in our lives and the
lives of others. A snapshot to say “look at where I was and look where God has
brought me.” What if instead of crying and filling out Taco Bell applications,
we pause and say,
“God, I know you’re with me in this. I anticipate that
you’ll use ALL of my experiences – the good, the bad, and the ugly – to bring
glory to You, if I allow it.”
So as you and I pray through what we are anticipating and
looking ahead towards, I have to quote Nate:
“GET EXCITED!”
