guest post | osheta moore - gracious expectations

Readers, I feel so honored to have Osheta Moore's words on my blog today. The wisdom, strength, and humility in her writing is a breath of fresh air. She is a force to be reckoned with in the blogging world. I'm a big fan of hers and I'm so happy to share my little corner of the internet with her today! Please do yourself a favor and soak in all of what she has to say. Oh and leave her some love in the comments section, will you? Enjoy!

“Oh my God! You have SO lost your mind!” I yelled at the driver who nearly cut us off on Storrow Drive, the uncomfortably narrow, often confusing, major parkway into Boston our family takes every Friday night.

So that my husband and I can get in a regular date night during the school year, we drop our kids off at the historic Park Street church for Fun Night. Between three kids, one church plant, and the high cost of living in Boston, we shamelessly take a more “ecumenical” approach when planning church activities for our children. If from the website we can tell that the leaders loves Jesus and they won’t be handing out snakes or Kool-aid at the end of the event—we’ll enroll the kiddos. We like to think of it as broadening their Kingdom pallet instead of ministry mooching.

“Babes, I guess their grace period has ended, huh?” Quipped my husband who deftly missed a sideswipe from one of the many anxious drivers merging from the onramp.

“Yes! It’s October! If they haven’t figured out their stuff by now—they don’t need to be driving!” Turning to my closed passenger window, I yelled at no one in particular, “No more ‘bless your hearts’, people! Learn how to drive in my city or take the ‘T’.”

My husband chuckled and skillfully merged onto our off-ramp.

“Bless your heart” is my way of absolving offenders of their sins while holding on my Southern fried condemnation. My closest friends and family know if I say, “bless your heart”, I’m actually sugar-coating the insult, “you’re such an idiot!”

This is how women in the South extend grace and I’ve honed it well—however false it may be.

Later that evening while we walked through the Common, I thought of my outburst in the car and was more than a little ashamed. ‘I shouldn’t have lost my temper in the car like that’, I thought.

Yes, people should be more careful drivers—especially on Storrow when it’s a hot mess at 7 pm on Friday Night—or anytime of day for that matter. Yes, we were nearly hit. Yes, my three children were in the backseat. Yes, I needed to eat lunch on Fridays so that my blood sugar is clearly out of there “there be a witch here” zone—hopefully I'll handle frustrations better.

These were all true.

There were other truths too that I selectively ignored.

Hard truths like:

Losing my temper at unaware drivers only teaches my kids to spew their frustrated energy on people—a far cry from the value hold that all people are made in the image of God therefore they deserve dignity and respect.

Inconvenient truths like:

When I forget my own fears when I first took Storrow at night, I reinforce my perfectionist superiority complex.

And Humbling truths like:

Although I so want to be perfect—I’m not and I will make mistakes.

Under the willows of the Common, I realized unless I made some changes, I’m doomed to stay the Southern gal with the sugar-sweet put down. A huge reason I can sit back and smugly say, “bless your heart” is that I operate under the false assumption that everything and everyone should be perfect. Well—my definition of perfection, which defers to my preferences and results in my comfort.

So, with the crisp New England breeze nipping my ear lobes and nose, I processed this struggle with God. As I asked him for help to give me His eyes for people, the words, “ you need to have gracious expectations” blew over, in, and around my mind.

Oh Lord, bless my heart!

But, God's onto something.

Because I’m a perfectionist, I like clearly communicated goals and expectations. How can I be perfect without a measuring stick? More importantly, how can I judge you as perfect without the same, or slightly more stringent measurement?

I needed to long-over due adjustment to my expectations of people, circumstances, and maybe even myself.

I think there’s a lot of good to having fair, healthy, well-communicated expectations, though. This is why we tell our young, idealistic eighteen year olds ready to rent together and flex their freedom to draw up an agreement on bills, homecare, house rules, etc. We don’t want them breaking the lease and their friendship over unmet expectations.

Since it’s right and reasonable to expect your partner to make a commitment if he is in fact "into you", we tell our girlfriends, “Girl, kick him to the curb” when her on-again/ off-again boyfriend refuses to DTR.

We intrinsically know there are just certain things you don’t do…people have expectations of their clergy, so the Christian community is incensed whenever we find out a pastor has taken advantage of his role for physical or monetary gain.

Expectations aren’t the problem.

Unchecked pride plants a seed of impatiences that springs forth, “Oh my God! How could you?”, when our expectation are left unment.

This is why the words, “gracious expectations” have been swirling around in my mind since that autumn date night.

What if I thought more closely about what I expect from others? What if I examine if those expectations are realistic or self-serving? What if the amazing grace I love to sing about preceded my expectations of people?

I think “bless your heart” would ring sweet and true as the benediction it’s meant to be.

Shortly after this date night I had a chance to put this newfound hypothesis to work.

Upon finding out an event was taking on a more corporate, commercial feel than the grass-roots, diverse opportunity it was first advertised as, I paced the floor of my apartment feeling ALL THE FEELINGS of frustration, anger, annoyance, and disappointment.

I talked my husband ear off, drafted a blog post blasting this group of women, and poured me a cup of tea spicy chai tea to edit my treatise of indictment. “For shame!“, I wanted to pronounce to the entire blogosphere.

Ungracious expectations.

GIFSoup


But, I didn’t. I deleted the post. Thankfully, I’m self-aware enough to know that I’m in that cage-stage of blogging, where I’ve hit my one-year anniversary and I think EVERYONE NEEDS TO KNOW AND READ MY THOUGHTS NOW—which is rarely ever true. Thank you, Jesus for the backspace key.

Without an outlet for my unsettled thoughts though, I wandered around my apartment late into the night—long after my tea cooled and mere hours before my children were suppose to get up.

I was in such turmoil because my expectations of these amazing leaders were not met. I expected them to do one thing and it seemed they were doing the exact opposite. I didn’t trust God to work in their hearts and I surely, didn’t offer my ungracious expectations to God who in all my years as a Christian, I’ve learned covers a my grubbiness with his love.

Holding onto my pride, I went to bed, pulled the covers over my head and wrote those women off.

Ungracious expectations.

Days later, I received an email from one of them that knocked me on my bum and revealed how ungracious I’ve been.

“We were wrong.” She said

“We’re changing everything,” she added.

“We’re sensing God tell us to do something different. Something bigger. Please pray for us. We’re sorry.”

And I wept.
I wept because I always, always do this. I strip grace of its beauty by juxtaposing it with my unfair, self-righteous expectations.

But I don’t want to be grubby anymore.
I want to be a woman who offers grace as quickly as this Southern girl was taught to pour a glass of sweet tea on a sticky, hot summer’s day.

Grace has always been one of those lofty, Christian values that I pray for and never truly open myself up to. Learning how to operate with gracious expectations has taught me that grace isn’t just for the theologians or bible teachers. It’s for the college student, the stay-at-home mom, the cafeteria lunch lady, and the blue-haired firecracker serving soup at the church potluck.

Grace is simply:

God’s heart that says, “I love you just the way you are”.

And…

God’s heart that says, “I know you could be better and I’m going to do everything in my power to patiently and lovingly help you.”
And there’s help for us ladies!

The same Holy Spirit that empowered Jesus to operate with gracious expectations towards the woman at the well or Peter the hot-head with a sword can cover our grubbiness with his grace.

So what does gracious expectations look like? Well…I’m still figuring that out. I think it starts with the stories we craft in our minds about others and ourselves— our internal narratives. I’ve also called it our internal dialogues. Or my favorite, the arguments with we win in the shower.
What if I started my narrative about drivers on Storrow with, ‘oh my goodness, this highway always freaks me out. I remember when I first moved here—I was terrified. They’ll probably miss their exits, go too slow, try to pull over when there isn’t a shoulder and get confused with the on ramps… I should pray for them!’

I think peace would fill my heart.

Gracious expectations.

What if I started with fellow believers with a narrative that said, ‘They’re human. They’re gonna mess up…so get ready. They need prayer and encouragement. ”

I think compassion would fill my heart.

Gracious expectations.

What if I when I’m standing in front of the mirror and my hips are curvier than I’d like, I say, ‘these hips book ended three beautiful babies. I’m made in the image of God and he is all together lovely, all together beautiful. He makes everything glorious. Sure I could eat better and exercise more, but the number on the scale does not measure my value. ”

I think hope would fill my heart.

Gracious expectations.

And over all these virtues, love would fill my heart, which binds them all together in perfect unity (Colossians 3:14)

So, going forward, when I jump in my car, read a blog post I disagree with, interact with leaders whose choices throw me for a loop, or make a mistake thereby violating my perfectionist sensibilities—I’m going to remember we’re all human and we’re bound to mess up…so I should get ready with grace—God’s grace that is sufficient for weaknesses.

Mine. Yours. Ours. Including the anxious drivers on Storrow.

Hi, my name is Osheta. I’m an Assembly-of-God-Methodist-Southern-Baptist-a-teryn turned Anabaptist. I love Jesus who is THE MOST scandalously loving person to walk the face of the earth. I love to dance and you can find me doing the Robot with my husband and three kids in our tiny apartment in Boston. Someday...somehow...somewhere I will be in a flash mob. All the better if we dance to Michael Jackson's "Thriller"! When I'm not dancing, I'm planting a church with my husband, writing on my blog, "Shalom in the City", or watching "Pride and Prejudice" for the eleventy billionth time.

Images via Death To The Stock Photo