Looking Past Our Expectations

                One of the things my family would do during our evenings in our Advent corner was read the Christmas story. My mom, ever the children’s teacher at heart, took the time to print out the story, cut it into strips, glue those strips to purple construction paper and laminate that construction paper. The end result was the Christmas story broken up into sections and every night Maria and I would fight over who got to read the latest installment. After it was read, we would paper clip it to the previous purple strip and by Christmas we had a long chain which we would find different ways to display.

                Today’s Advent reflection is all about listening nd looking past our expectations.

“I think about the way our expectations dominate our faith and especially how they dominate the Christmas story. Its familiarity renders it almost impossible to hear with a new, radical listening, the way it needs to be heard. We know the ending so we impose that on the listening. What a challenge to hear it as if for the first time, letting the story of hope cause everything in us to change” (Daybreaks).

                Nothing in our life is what we expect it to be and our experience of Christmas should be no exception. This idea makes me think about how my expectations of Christmas have changed over the years.  When Maria and I were little, Christmas morning just seemed so much more exciting. I was always up first because Maria, even as a small child, is NOT a morning person. I would pester Maria is get up and then we would go together to pester my parents to get moving. Eventually, to save their sanity, my parents started leaving little gifts from Santa outside our bedroom doors so when we woke at 5:00am we would have something to occupy us for at least an hour. Then there was the usual rush downstairs and exclamations over all of the presents. Maria and I would sit at the foot of the tree and carefully select the first present we would open while mom shuffled around making everything even more perfect and dad brewed the coffee or started a fire. 

                Now, Christmas looks very different. I am still the first one up but I gave up on pestering Maria and instead get myself a cup of coffee, turn on the radio and sit downstairs by myself for awhile just soaking in the moment. Eventually, the rest of the family joins me and there is some time spent on last minute gift preparation and then we exchange our simple gifts.

For the first few years, this change in my expectation of Christmas morning was pretty depressing. I really wanted that excitement and joy I felt as a child and, as a result, missed alot of special moments. 

                But when I actually take the time to think about it, looking past my expectations of that day has resulted in a wonderful, beautiful, honest happiness. I now love Christmas for entirely different reasons than I did as a child and my expectations of the day have completly changed.

I am blessed because I have another year to celebrate the birth of my amazing mom.

I am blessed because I have another year to take the annual family photos in front of the fireplace at grandma’s house and pose for the yearly grandkids picture on the couch.

I am blessed with another year of listening to the men in my family joke about being in grandmas Glenfiddich club (the non-so- secret society my grandmother created in order to ration out her whiskey. You have to have known her for 30 years to even get a glass).

I am blessed to have another year to celebrate the growth in our family with the addition of Mike. I can’t wait to see who else joins our clan in the future.

I am blessed to have another year to sit at the kids table for dinner (and now I can drink wine!) and then retreat into the kitchen to carefully wash grandmas Country Rose china and catch up with my cousins about school, jobs, boys/husbands and the struggles that come along with those three things.

I am blessed with another year of a house full of people I have no actual blood relation to but I still consider to be my family.

                Occasionally, I feel sad when I look at how much Christmas has changed and all of the ways it no longer meets my childhood expectations but I try not to even think about it because waiting for something to fulfill your expectations is dangerous. More often than not, while you are waiting for that moment to come, you are missing out on the incredible moments happening all around you.

                I don’t want to live my faith with these expectation either. I don’t want to miss out on the beautiful things happening in my relationship with God because I am too busy thinking about how it is not living up to my expectations. Today, my prayer is to always look past my expectations of God and allow the reality to change me entirely.