Cumin Rolls and Gingerbread Maccabees: Managing Expectations
Another baking misstep took place a few days before when I could not find a gingerbread man cookie cutter. The girls had been asking me for weeks to make the happy, little cookies to give to their friend but, of course, I procrastinated. What I came home with was a set of Hanukah shaped cookies cutters from the clearance table at the grocery store. Surely a Maccabee man could pass for a gingerbread man. Well it did, but then the kids grab the menorah, Star of David and dreidel shapes and began pressing them into my first time ever gingerbread dough. Welp, Jesus was Jewish and we do love to talk about Jewish traditions so an opening to share the story of the Maccabees and the miracle of the oil presented itself.
Later that morning, and by later I mean 6:30 am, the kids began tearing into their gifts which I had carefully, reluctantly and painstakingly pondered and ultimately decided upon, later regretted and returned and replaced. They seemed to like each one and wanted to rip open the packaging and start playing. We redirected them to their final and most special gifts, tablets for the girls and a balance bike for the toddler. The girls, never in a million years expecting to get their very own tablet wanted to start using them right away. It is a good thing that my husband had the forethought to set them up before we wrapped them. Anyhoo, said toddler immediately abandoned his bike and made a beeline for the tablets and started shouting "Me Too!" He then threw himself on the floor sobbing. I was crushed but then rationalized with my better half that he was much too young for his own tablet. His Daddy swept him up and took him outside to ride his new bike and just like that, the crying stopped and the request to ride his sister's "big" bike ensued. With the girls wrapped up in their new technology and the toddler outside riding the new bike Daddy had convinced him was best I had a few minutes to string two or three thoughts together and this blog post started rolling around in my head.
Expectations. We all have them. Some we don't know we have until an opportunity presents itself as in the case of my toddler wanting to play on his big sister's tablet. Some like the cinnamon rolls and the gingerbread men, we are sure of. We carefully rehearse them and make them known over and over and over. My expectations for Christmas mornings include a clean house, patient, well behaved children dressed in matching Christmas pajamas and a perfectly posed Christmas picture around a beautifully decorated tree. Ha! Those expectations went unmet but I will take it considering that for over a decade our Christmas mornings were just stark reminders of infertility, miscarriage and adoption loss. Unfulfilled expectations, hopes dashed year after year. I have a dear friend who unexpectedly lost her too-young mother this year. She had hoped that the cancer was gone. It was not. My father-in-law passed away two months ago after a long goodbye. We had hoped for another Christmas with him but thankfully celebrated in 2014 as if it was his last. Another friend, each year, hopes to find her soulmate to make her Christmastime complete.
Expectations are a slippery bar of soap. Sometime you have it firmly in your grasp lathering up and working towards your goals. Sometimes your expectations are on the shower floor gathering up loose strands of hair. (Gross, sorry) So, I learned a few things about expectations this Christmas season. Eventually, the toddler was happy to sit between his sisters and watch them play on their tablets. He had learned to be content, if temporarily, with someone else receiving what he wanted. First lesson - We can rejoice with those who rejoice and be content with someone else's happiness. The girls were happy with their Maccabee men and were excited to show the rest of the family the Star of David. They were quick to move past their previous expectations and move on to something different, even better. Second lesson - Pay attention, God may have a different plan for you. I never did get that beautiful Christmas picture and I am still stewing about it a little. I did however, get this picture and it captures my reality, not my idealistic expectations. I suppose, somehow, that is better. I adjusted my expectations. Third lesson - Don't allow your expectations to ruin your attitude about your reality.
Although we may have had to lay our expectations aside, we do have One who will never leave our expectations unmet and in whom we can place our hope confidently. God may or may not fulfill our earthly hopes but we can be confident that his plan for us is beyond anything we can imagine. CS Lewis once wrote, "Most people, if they had really learned to look into their own hearts, would know that they do want, and want acutely, something that cannot be had in this world. There are all sorts of things in this world that offer to give it to you, but they never quite keep their promise." So with that, I will leave you with some biblical promises that can speak for themselves.
Proverbs 24:14 - "Know that wisdom is such to your soul; if you find it, there will be a future, and your hope will not be cut off."
Jeremiah 29:11 - "For I know the plans I have for you, declares the LORD, plans for welfare and not for evil, to give you a future and a hope."
2 Corinthians 4:16-18 - "So we do not lose heart. Though our outer self is wasting away, our inner self is being renewed day by day. For this light momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison, as we look not to the things that are seen but to the things that are unseen. For the things that are seen are transient, but the things that are unseen are eternal."
1 Peter 1:3 - "Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! According to his great mercy, he has caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead."
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