when the coffee's not hot...?
saturday musings #7 -- on misplaced expectations.
After a brief hiatus from Saturday Musings, I’m back in the saddle. In order for me to provide quality content, I needed to take a step back and figure out where I’d be taking Saturday Musings from here and into the future. I’m excited to present so much more content planned for December and I’m working on more to come in the new year. As always, a significant amount of prayer goes into what I write about and for Saturday Musings, it wasn’t so much what I needed to write about, but what the mission was behind it.
I slightly changed the source of where I’ll be writing from, but the outcome will still be the same. Instead of limiting myself to pulling from personal journal entries and expounding on them (although there will be a good amount of that), I want to be a little more open-ended about just hashing out as much as possible, in brief contemplations, my deep thoughts I had that week, what I’ve been clueing in on, and what God’s prompted my heart to bring up. I find that it will be more relatable, less forced, and overall streamlined when I allow the Spirit to have unrestrained creative liberty, but still have some strucuture and an overall reason for why I’m writing Saturday Musings.
Bear with me as I proceed to finess SM to my liking. I hope in time I’ll grow in the direction I need to head in and that my art will only strengthen as time passes.
At one time or another, all of us have been let down by somebody else or even by our own selves. It is inevitable that it has happened and will likely happen again before this life is over, no matter how careful we are to prod and poke before we give ourselves away.
However, maybe it’s possible to trust, be disappointed, yet still have the grace to begin again, and better yet, forgive others, ourselves, and even a situation, so that we can see from not just our own eyes but from another’s as well.
This has been something that I can’t volunteer an all-round winning answer to, but I have been contemplating plenty the past few months and after all, musings = contemplations.
As the queen of visual word pictures and aesthetic pleasure (hence, the art in almost every post of mine), I thought of this rather lengthy analogy yesterday. For those of you who shy away from strong metaphorical and analagous language, forgive me. In my defense, even Jesus used stories—albeit parabolic, which is a different kind of storytelling methodology—to communicate truths.
If you can come along for a bit of a ride, I appreciate your endurance and attention span. And if not, feel free to browse through my other posts; perhaps you’ll find something else to your liking.
If you work, attend university, are on a budget and can’t eat every meal out, or just enjoy warm food, you probably own an insulated soup mug or thermos of some sort.
An excellent invention, it keeps the food or drink warm until we are ready to eat or we become thirsty and need a little pick me up in the form of our favorite drug: coffee.
One function we know insulated mugs do not serve is the one of heating up food that is certainly cold. Before pouring that coffee into the to-go mug which keeps the drink hot, a microwave or a fresh brew is in order. The coffee pot or the microwave serves as the source of heat so that the thermos can do it’s job as a container of the warmth created.
The same can be said for food that has been in the refrigerator overnight. It would be ludicrous to waltz into the break room for our soup, open the insulated container only to find that the food is freezing cold, and throw up our hands, angry that the thermos didn’t do it’s job. What? That doesn’t make sense. Something’s missing here.
There’s a difference between the microwave and the thermos.
One adds something to the food’s state so that it is able to be what it needs to be.
The other one aides in protecting, sustaining, and providing an environment for the already-complete substance to continue in it’s fullness.
Maybe you know where this is going. Maybe you’re lost—I wouldn’t blame you.
Here’s the thing.
Aiding and creating are not synonymous.
One is a companion, the other the origin of.
Moments in life will surely come, if they have not already, when the external world reveals itself in all of its ugliness to the internal one—the one inside me and you.
In those moments, oftentimes our sensory selves come out to protect the inner world, and we desperately need to cling to something that is at least halfway tangible.
I’m created as natural, yet spiritual alongside my humanity. There are intangible desires that I hold in the deep chambers of my heart. Desires, and wounds that need dressing. God has provided the natural world for His natural created beings, and naturally, much healing comes from vessels that come alongside us in our mountaintops and low valleys
Those vessels can be,
our lovers, the balm that heals deepest, I think. Those people who guide, comfort, hold, remain, when the world feels like its caving in or the waters seem to drown us. A meal with a friend, a hug from a parent, a sitting-silence with another human who understands with words unspoken how deeply we hurt.
Or,
beautiful places in the great world outside that call to our inner life and cure parts of us through awe. I’ve spoken of ocean waves before, and I reminisce again how grand and vast the waters are, waters that make us seem like ants in the grand scheme of it all. Nature inspires creativity, belonging, hope, and humilty.
Another could be mentors and shepherds from the local church community who call us out of the darkness and into the light, throwing truth into the evil that has beset us.
Perhaps a passion that gives us an avenue to revel in our abilities and talents that are innate to our personality.
Suddenly though, you find yourself no longer sincerely caring for and selflessly attending to these parts of life, but they become the source that fills our deepest longings.
One day, we wake up, and what we thought would never end is dried up—a husk of what it formerly was. Our temporary balms start to feel like placebos and less like a real cure, because the innermost healing and wholeness can’t be guaranteed or completed through creation or human ingenuity alone.
The world likes to invite us to drown away our truest desires and deepest regrets because it knows there’s nothing like a life-saving cure it can offer. And so instead, it distracts, embezzles, and defrauds. It masquerades long enough to rope us in, promising that the thermos can play at being a microwave too, until its too late for us to turn back.
Addiction, identity crises, chronic depression, alcoholism, brain rot. All symptoms of a desperate attempt at escapism, because someday, our lovers will fail us, and we will be left high and dry.
Looks bleak, doesn’t it?
The truth is, people—even those who we love most, would die for—were not made to hold our deepest longings.
Jobs—even our dreamy, everything-I-could-ever-imagine jobs—were not made to hold our deepest longings.
The most heavenly place on earth cannot transcend the real Heaven.
Creation is severely limited compared to the God who has no limits at all, and that is the whole point. Who needs faith in a limitless God when we ourselves have limitless power, prestige, relationships, resources, and have achieved perfection elsewhere?
We can keep opening and closing the thermos, blindly hoping that the next time we open it, somehow our soup will be toasty warm.
Or maybe we can invite in Somebody who is not only fully capable of holding our deepest desires and fulfilling them as well as healing age-old wounds that still smart, He wants to fulfill those tasks…no, those roles in our hearts.
The One who made us with longings also made Himself to fit those hollows. Certainly he uses vocations, missions, churches, friends, marriages, passions, and so much else to nudge us, awaken us to these wells inside. They even play a role in making us a complete human. But there is a sting when a loved one misunderstands or speaks a harsh word. In those moments, there seems to be a dissonance rather than a harmony to the notes we are dancing too.
Its the tension between living in the world, yet being not of it.
In order for me to not get lost in the topic of desire, which I’ve expounded upon in another article, let’s return to misplaced expectations and where we can securely replant them.
Safety and belonging can be truly experienced in our lives on earth when both of those parts of identity are rooted in a place that is higher than us—or better yet, a Person. This is what pertains to greatest longings inside of us.
We all want to be loved, pursued, to belong and have purpose. These are fundamental aspects of the human heart and experience. We will always be longing until we reach Eternity. But our wonderful hope is that we have a Shepherd, a Father, who holds us when we weep, dances with us in our ecstatic joy, and surprises us with plenty that exceeds expectations.
A relationship, a safe place, is available with that God, and nobody will take it from you or from me.
God can be our thermos and our microwave…too far? Yeah, I thought so too.
The likelihood of everything on earth having an ending is almost certain. Not only does everything eventually end, but it ceases to provide nutrients when we demand too much of it. ‘It’ is anything we are expecting God-sized actions from that only God can provide.
How freely and lightly our hearts soar when they are carried on wings that originate in Eternity and can never falter. Then, our lives can be reimagined because we have the right posture to pour out rather than suck dry. Suddenly, people, places, and positions we hold become infinitely dearer and it shows, because we no longer expect them to define us, command us, or complete us.
This is freedom. It is available, to one and all, every morning we wake, when we hit find ourselves once again at a crossroads, and at night when we lay our heads down to rest.
He is waiting, always waiting.
Let’s not treat our blessings like microwaves, folks. They’ll lovingly perform the duties of thermos.
Let’s leave the microwaving to God.
