What Did You Expect?

"Esther, based on your description, faith is hard." The serious note in my sister's voice made me pause before responding. She'd come out to talk to me as I sat on the front porch pondering the beauty of my herb garden.

"What do you mean?" I finally asked, glancing at her without meeting her eyes.

"To keep believing in and expecting the best--actually expecting it to happen--even when there's no evidence it will. When you're in the worst situation and it seems like there's no way out and no possibility for good. That's hard." (I'm afraid I am paraphrasing her poorly. I added in some of the words she left out to give you all the proper meaning. She said it better.)

I had to do a slight double take at her response. My sixteen-year-old baby sister was, in that moment, the most mature person I know. In a calm voice, my sister gave me a series of very good reasons why faith was difficult and in that moment I couldn't help but wondering if living a life of faith as I described was even possible. If perhaps, I'd led you all wrong and perhaps it wasn't possible. Yet she, after acknowledging the difficulties, merely nodded her head in determination, and looked out over the flowers. 

I replayed the words she'd spoken, her tone of voice, her eyes that spoke of conviction and realized that rather than being scared that faith wasn't possible, she had accepted faith as a challenge. A game almost. Like the warrior princesses she writes about and emulates, my sister was picking up her armor and cloaking herself in faith. Ready to face whatever impossible situation life was about to hand her. I don't know what situation she was referring to. I felt like she was pondering some situation in her own life that was testing her faith, but she wasn't backing down. Impossible as she'd just said it was. 

"Faith is hard." I finally acknowledged, still unsure if I believed I could have faith, especially when confronted with her determination and faith. Then I added, "But I think not having faith would be harder."

She nodded. We fell silent. She went back inside.

When I wrote You Get What You Expect I had already planned out this post and next week's as well. I knew the message and the analogy I would be making. I was very excited to follow up my faith-filled "You get what you expect" statement with the doubt-filled title "What did you expect?" The contrast and irony thrilled me. 

I did not expect my sister to steal the show. She much more poignantly and accurately explained what I had discovered a week earlier. And while, perhaps, she did not say anything that I did not already know, she said it in a way that made it real. Still, I do have an analogy, and I feel its worth sharing. So here's what I was going to say. My sister just beat me to it :)

***

I didn't get the pay raise I was hoping for. I did get a raise, but it was approximately half of what I felt I was worth, and significantly less than my dad believes I'm worth (I fear he has more faith in me than I do). The disappointment about my raise is the reason I went barefoot walking last week. I needed to get away, de-stress, think. And ask God why He hadn't met my expectations. I had tried so hard to have faith that He could inspire my boss to double my raise. I felt heartsick and sad and confused and although my mind still believed that expectations could be met, my heart was struggling to have faith (or maybe it's the other way around??)

Each step I took on that barefoot walk when I didn't step on any painful rocks was another reminder that I (or at least part of me does) do believe that we get what we expect. Yet it seemed that I had evidence to the contrary. 

(By the way, I did know that I did not get the raise I wanted when I wrote last week's post but I intentionally, and truthfully, wrote with full faith and expectation that it will come my way because of what happened next on my walk.)

I found a penny. 

It was not a pretty penny. 

In fact, it was so gritty, grimy, and gray that I almost wouldn't have known it was a penny.

I recognized the small, round shape. That was all. It looked more like a cardboard cap from a firecracker (which I have mistaken for coins more times than I can count). But I knew it was a penny. Even though I couldn't see the embossed designs. I could see nothing that made it look like a penny except for its size.

I picked it up. Turned it over in my fingers. Attempted to make out any distinguishing marks on its face. Nothing. Everything was absolutely obscured. Giving up on finding its mint date, I slipped it in my pocket and paused.

I always pause after finding pennies. They all have a message. Something to do with whatever I was thinking about when I found the penny. So I backed up my thoughts, rewound my memories and identified what I'd been thinking the moment I spotted this penny. 

I'd been trying to reconcile my raise with my expectations. Trying to explain how the law of expectations could work when I hadn't gotten what I expected. When hard as I work, and ask as I might, I cannot change my superiors' decisions. Once they've decided how much I'm worth, there's very little I can do to change that until a few months have passed and its been long enough that I can ask for another raise. I was stuck in an impossible situation.

The message that accompanied this penny was, "There, that's your raise." 

Okay...? I started walking again.

Three paces later, I stopped and looked down to my right. The message I heard was strong--"And that is what you can expect."

I was looking at a pile of muck (gravel, mud, worms, grass, weeds, water) that accumulated in the gutter at the bottom of someone's driveway. Well, that's what it would look like I was looking at if anyone had been watching me. What I was actually looking at were the five pennies, almost as gritty and gross as the one I'd just picked up, sitting half covered in the muck. 

Five pennies. My record up to that point for pennies in one place was three. This was almost six (if you count the one a few paces back as being 'in the same place'). Even if you don't, five is crazy. I picked up those pennies and bounced them in my hand. Then I dug through the muck to see if any were hiding below the surface. None. They'd all been sitting on the top as if waiting for me to come along and see them. I'm actually not sure many people would have recognized them for pennies. They were that gross and hidden. But I knew them. 

I pulled that first penny out of my pocket and held it in one hand while I looked at the five in my other. There I stood, comparing the representation of my raise (half of what I wanted) with "what I could expect" in the other hand. 5 times that amount. 

I was thoroughly confused. I asked God, "Why couldn't you have given me the full amount? Why not meet my expectations now?"

His laughing reply: "What did you expect? For all your expectations to appear as brilliant and fresh as a brand new copper penny?" 

That was an exact quote. The rest I paraphrase. 

You will get what you expect. But that doesn't mean its going to look like you expect. Sometimes the answers to your expectations are covered in muck and grime. Sometimes you have to look a little closer at a situation to find what you're looking for. It doesn't always look like what you expect even if you end up getting what you expect. There are times, many of them, when you have to dig through the muck and find the tremendous blessing hidden inside.

My expectation was to make what I'm worth and be worth what I make. That’s what I repeated to myself and it’s the commitment I make to God and my employer. Nowhere in that expectation did I suggest it would happen without work. Nor did I stipulate that it would happen at my current workplace or one source of income. Either from a second job, or, did you realize there are different types of income? Knowledge, praise, satisfaction, joy. All a form of income. 

Do not take this to mean I am settling. I am not readjusting my expectations. Even as I realize how rich I am because I am satisfied and joyful, I still expect my monetary income will be increasing. Just, perhaps, not now. But three paces down the road, with a little work, some imagination and creativity, and in a completely unexpected way, I'll get there and beyond. God promised and I expect He will fulfill that promise. I have no idea how. I suspect I'll get discouraged. I anticipate another few moments of realizing that faith is hard. But I accept the challenge. I'm going to find those expectations even if I have to dig them out of the ground to get them.

Faith is hard.

What did you expect?