The Truth About Expectations

I rolled over to the farthest corner of our bed. I wanted him to know how distant I felt in that moment. Our bed wasn’t big enough. 

I thought that if I was loud enough he would get the point of the message I was trying to send, that he wasn’t loving me well and that I was angry, tired, and lonely. 

I’ve carried this bitterness for longer than I care to say. I’ve spent many nights at the corner of our bed hoping he would get the point, and I’ve felt all kinds of justified in my right to throw a fit. 

I had been building up quite a case against my husband of how he hadn’t been meeting my needs. And curled up and feeling uncared for, I had removed God from the picture, and all I could see was my hurt. My deep desire to be loved and my husband’s inability to meet the need. 

I thought I had every right to defend my case, but then God stepped in and shed light on all the evidence that I had gathered for the prosecution. 

I wasn’t waiting in expectation for God. But God was waiting in expectation for me. He invited me to drop the accusations I was hurling at my husband and to wait in expectation for what he alone could do. He revealed to me how my expectations were directed at the wrong target.

Where are you directing your expectation? 

Psalm 62: 5 (NKJV) reads, “My soul, wait silently for God alone, for my expectation is from Him.” Do you notice the wording there? Our expectation is not only directed at God, our expectation is from God himself. He is everything. When we put our hope in anything other than God himself, we end up curled up in the corner of our bed, angry, tired, and lonely. 

The truth is, when we expect everything from our husbands, we expect very little from God. Somehow we don’t receive the truth, that our husbands cannot fulfill all of our needs, be able to attend to our every wish and whim, and love us the way we desperately want to be loved. Why? Because our husbands are human. They’re flawed. And they’re not God. 

It is unfair for us to place our expectations where they don’t belong. When we look to our husbands for our everything, it sets us up for heartache. Undue blame is placed on them, and our very big God is made to be very small. 

Wife Step: Ask yourself this question: Where am I directing my expectation? 

Be honest with God about where your expectations have been placed, and then wait for what God alone can give you. You are dearly loved by the One who is able.

Amy Walkup is in the final stages of completing her degree as a professional counselor. She is passionate about sitting with others in the midst of their pain and difficulties in order to find the place where God is working to bring restoration and transformation. Amy desires to see women, men, and families transformed by the grace of God. Living in rural Minnesota with her farming husband and two sets of twins, she continues to learn more about the grace of God and how this grace allows God’s children to be made new.