About once a year, I go through a stage in which I resign myself to acceptance of the fact that no one will ever behave exactly the way I would like them to behave. I come to the point of a cynical realization that my expectations for everyone are way too high, and no one can ever live up to them. Not even me, for that matter, although I now can label that sort of behavior as the “fundamental attribution error.”

[This is the discrepancy between the dispositional attributions we make regarding others (i.e., "He's late to the meeting because he's disrespectful and doesn't care about making others wait.") versus the situational attributions we make regarding ourselves (i.e.,"I'm going to be late to the meeting because the traffic was abnormally bad this morning.").]

And yet, like clockwork, and usually around the holidays, either my expectations are raised or other people begin acting much worse than normal. And so the ideas I have in my mind of how families should be, how fathers and mothers should behave, how siblings should act, how friends should be, and what guys in relationships (of any kind) most definitely should not do (cf. previous post re: Halloween Curse) are continually crushed. I have ideas and archetypal expectations for coworkers and bosses and grandparents and aunts and uncles and cousins and nieces and nephews and teachers and leaders and followers and church members and strangers and on and on, ad infinitum. Again, almost none of my expectations is ever met, much less exceeded. And perhaps the most disturbing part is I never think any of my expectations are really all that unreasonable.

All of this, of course, has occurred regularly since at least high school and is filed under “Abandonment, Commitment, and Trust Issues.” Oddly (ironically?), all of this is also filed under “Reasons I Love Jesus” and “Reasons I Have Never Doubted God’s Existence.” No matter what I go through, no matter how intensely things have sucked or how deeply I’ve been wounded, no matter how many people turned away from their God-given and self-proclaimed responsibility to love me, God has always, always been there for me. Always. True story.

Some moments, like earlier this morning, otherwise alone in my room, I really feel God’s presence around me like a blanket. I think if I could always live in that awesome state of prayer, surrounded on all sides by the Holy Spirit, life would be perfect. Nothing would get to me. Nothing would make me cry, save tears of wonder and joy and thanksgiving. I know, as my former pastor would say, God doesn’t allow us to live on that “mountaintop” while we’re here on earth. We can visit, and it’s a much-needed and precious oasis when we do, but we can’t live there. Because we’re human. And because we’re always going to fail to meet others’ expectations, as well as our own.

Oftentimes I think maybe if the people I know here on earth didn’t let me down, I wouldn’t feel like I need God in my life. Or maybe I wouldn’t appreciate His faithfulness if I didn’t have the faux-faithfulness of us flawed humans to which I could compare it. (I just wanted to use that alliteration.) (Also, please note I included myself in that fantastically alliterated statement.)

Anyway, on a more cheerful note, God answers prayers. So many prayers. Huge ones and small ones. I can’t count on one hand the number of BIG changes I’ve seen in the past month alone. I’m talking potentially life-changing prayer requests for those around me. Great stuff. (I just thought, “Great scott!” like Doc Brown.)
As for me personally, God’s been giving me much-needed distance from some of the ultra-emotional issues I’ve been dealing with lately. We’ve still got a long way to go, though.

If I can ever get a forum set up here on the site, I want to start a thread or two for prayer requests for those of you on here. I think it would be a good thing for us to do for one another.

That’s all I really think I should say right now.

Peace, love, and answered prayers.