Shedding Expectations

 Driving home the other night, the old demons awoke and began to strangle me.  Down down down into the abyss of doubt, doom and despair I fell.  I wanted to hurt, wanted to yell, to scream, to allow the anger to fill me until I exploded and was no more.  In this deep despair, I begged God for a sign.  Asked, once more, for some tangible proof that He still loves me, that I'm not the worthless reject I've been labelled.

 All was silent.  I wanted words that said "I was wrong", or "You are missed", or "Our community is weaker without you".  I turned to my computer, hoping for a message from God there.  My inbox held ads for restaurants, savings to be had on kids clothing and shoes, and a praise report from Austria, but nothing personal, nothing that spoke of regret.  I wondered then, as I have wondered, if God mourns the ripping apart of community, the rejection by his people.

  Being rejected by a church damages one's view of God.

 I stood in church the next day, still broken and battered.  Music washed over me.  Unable to be still, I lifted my voice and then, in that moment of corporate worship, a realization swept over me.  Healing will come.  It won't be the way I want it, nor will it come from the places I long for it to come.  I want to be vindicated by others' regret.  Yet that would not be true healing.  It's hard to lay aside these hopes and desires, to realize the restoration and reconciliation I have longed for most likely won't happen on this earth.  Slowly, I strip off the layers of anger and hope-deferred to step naked of all expectations into the healing embrace of the Father, choosing to trust, each day new, that healing, full perfect and complete, will come.