I am expectant without expectations.

I spoke those words to a friend recently and have been thinking about them ever since. They are true, now perhaps more than ever.

I am fully expectant that God is working on my behalf. He hears me. He sees me. He knows exactly what I need. He is faithful and just, good and kind. He is love and life and living water.

And as I take steps of obedience and explore different opportunities I am doing my best to keep my expectations out of how I think things should unfold.

I have a way of doing that, inserting my own ideas for how things should work out.

How people should respond or act.

How circumstances should work out.

How prayers should be answered.

The timeline in which God should work.

But should is manipulative and controlling, the very opposite of what I want: breakthrough and miracles.

I write this from a place of more unknowns than knowns and more questions than answers. But I have learned that my expectations often lead to unmet expectations. And unmet expectations lead to disappointment. And disappointment leads to things like anger, fear, resentment and hopelessness.

My expectations can blind me from seeing the beauty and daily blessings all around me. They put rigidity in places where perhaps God wants to awe and surprise and breathe anew.

The timeline I would have preferred for this season is long in the rearview. God has exceeded my expectations, if you will, but not in the way that brags of miracles from the shores of answered prayer and fulfilled desires.

No, he has exceeded my expectations with abundant peace and joy and strength to weather the waves of the unknown. He has blessed me with time. Abundant time to spend with loved ones, travel, learn and write. He has blessed me with a greater understanding of his grace and love, and how that extends to every person. He has stretched and expanded my thinking, and increased my capacity for acceptance.

I have grown. I have changed. I have fallen more deeply in love with the character and person and being of God.

This past year looked different than I thought it would, and better than I could have imagined.

Expectant without expectations.

And now the words that I spoke in a casual conversation have become a prayer over my life.

That I will live fully expectant that God is providing and making a way without placing my own expectations for how said provision and way should be made.

It feels like letting go, but perhaps it’s more like [finally] living free.