Adjusting My Expectational Positioning System

I never purchase things online for myself, yet things always show up at our house that others have purchased....clothes, books, tools....box after box.  It seems so novel to me to do this and I think the reason I'm against it is because you always have to use a credit card.  I'm so afraid of credit cards so I avoid them.  But recently when the latest Ann Voskamp book was released, I decided I really wanted to have it and did the unthinkable - ordered it online.  What a concept!  I'm only a few pages in.  Literally every sentence is so rich.  It's almost too much at times, but what I'm taking away from it so far is great and she puts into words what has been my problem throughout my life - those darn expectations.  Expectations, in general, lead to suffering.  It's not wrong to have expectations, it's that our expectations, if they are what control us, will never be fully met.  Something will always go wrong and if we rely on our expectations then, inevitably, we will be disappointed.  The solution is really quite simple.  Trust God.  That's it.

She put it another way - we need to have an Expectational Positioning System, or the EPS, just like a GPS, downloaded into us.  Just like when we are lost en route somewhere or we take a wrong turn, the GPS quickly reroutes us.  When we are en route in life and things don't go as planned (nearly every day around here), we don't need to be lost, we just need to reroute.  If I was driving with my husband and he took a wrong turn, that doesn't suddenly mean he has left me - we are "lost" together.  In the same way, she says, we are never lost with God.  Just because life doesn't go as planned doesn't mean He has left us.  He promises that He will NEVER leave us or forsake us.  So we reroute.  And the key is DO THIS QUICKLY.  If the GPS waited and waited to get us back en route we would get more and more lost.  But, instead, what happens is that it immediately tries to get us back on track and it is relentless in its efforts to turn us around.  Turn here, turn HERE, TURN HERE!!!!  So it is with God and our life.  He says, "Go with the flow, go with THE FLOW, GO WITH THE FLOW!!!!"  But we stay lost, preferring to be disappointed, sad, in our pity party, figuring God has no idea what He's doing, assuming He's deaf, needs our help (oh the irony) and all the while He's just changed our course, brought a new thing into our life and just wishes we could see it right away.

One of the benefits of learning to adjust our EPS is to look for God in EVERYTHING and then to actually see Him.  He's everywhere!  My eyes have been opened to this and its been amazing.  I have had so many moments recently and if I were to count them they would be as many as the minutes in the day because I'm really starting to see God in everything.  One of the big ones recently was how we ended up hosting a young girl for a week that I had never met.  Her parents got covid and she needed a place to stay the week before her baptism so she wouldn't miss it.  My daughters knew her, but the rest of us didn't.  We have no room!  So she shared a bed with one of my girls, went to work during the day, came back late at night, debriefed a little here and there, and then left - it was virtually painless.  She came and went, but what came out of it was a connection with her parents that went to our church whom we had never met.  It didn't occur to me that it might have meant quite a lot to them that we had hosted their daughter and yet we got them lovely thank you note from them especially because she was getting baptized and because we had hosted her she was kept well and the significant day carried on as planned.  I see God in that just because He knows how I long to connect with people and keeps working it out so that it happens.  But it isn't always so major - yesterday was a regular day, but it sure started off in a funny way.  I felt like I was in National Geographic.  I was driving my daughter to her little nanny job (that's another answer to prayer) and on the way back home I saw two mourning doves on a fence.  They were literally doing a dance that you see in nature videos.  It was so cute, kissing each other on each side of the cheek over and over again.  I thought to myself, "I wonder if that's a courtship dance I'm seeing?"  Suddenly there was definitely love in the air and I thought to myself, "Wow!  What did I just witness!?"  It's hilarious, but I really felt like God allowed me to see their beautiful birdie love story and I honestly felt like I was the only person in the world to ever see how mourning doves dance.  It was literally two seconds out of my day, but because I'm looking for God in everything more and more, to me, it was God showing up in my day.  So easily missed, so easily overlooked.  It was so beautiful and I was so grateful I saw them.  The rest of my day unfolded in short conversations with my kids, my husband, friends, Bible Study....and I find myself more grateful as every day passes for how God shows up, opens my eyes to what He's doing, where He is.  He is in everything, even in a cup of tea, a cat against my leg, the rooster outside crowing.....that makes my life so full!

One more example - our horses.  They have to be the cutest things on the farm, but one of them got a minor infection in his hooves.  It could be deadly if he keeps walking on the wet grass, so we had to pen them up in the barn.  This could have been a major irritation, but now that we are memorizing James for the 2nd time, we decided to "count it all joy" and took the farrier's advice and quickly set up a pen for them.  There are so many reasons that we could have been bugged by this - it was going to take a lot of work, reorganizing of the barn, money for materials, physical effort, time away from other things.....but instead, once we got our head around it, we discovered we had all the materials, my husband was super creative and worked at it with the boys.  Within a few hours it was all done, "for free", and the horse should be fine.  It was bonus, too, because we had really wanted to do this with the wedding coming up, but when?  I love that God rerouted us and made us do it right away instead of the week of the wedding.  It's just God giving us the eyes to see these things.

I keep becoming a Christian, haha.  Every day God shows me where I need His sanctification and I love how He shows up in the little (and big) things daily, moment by moment.