Dana’s Story Part TWO

My Perfect Life or NOT!

I’m going to skip ahead and jump right into the perfect life and home-life expectation I had at one point in my life.

How many of you married couples were like me when you were young and dreamed about married life and your perfect husband or wife? Isn’t it crazy how, as kids, we can watch a show, like “Leave it to Beaver” or “Andy Griffith”, and then get a vision in our head of how one day we too will have a perfect spouse, be a perfect spouse, have perfect children, and live a perfect life? Just like what we see on those TV shows. Listen up single people!!

HAAAAAAAAAAA! I am laughing so hard right now as I write this, because I honestly believed “perfect” was how it was going to be for me! It’s kind of funny now, but for years, it was not a laughing matter! For too long, I held on to this “perfect” idea, and became miserable as I continued to compare my marriage and family to what I had seen on TV (and to other seemingly “perfect” marriages I had seen in real life).

One expectation after another remained UNMET.

Maybe you can relate? Maybe what you see in your life and marriage right now is nothing like what you’ve dreamed?

How do we go forward, past these unmet expectations and unfulfilled dreams, most of which we placed upon ourselves, and actually become what God has planned for us? We are able to if we do it right!

My soul, wait only upon God and silently submit to Him; for my hope and expectation are from Him. He only is my Rock and my Salvation; He is my Defense and my Fortress, I shall not be moved. (Psalm 62:5-6, AMPC)

Let me share a short excerpt from my life, and our so far 38 years of marriage, to give you a picture.

My husband, David, was introduced to Jesus by his high school football coaches here in Escondido, CA. When David got saved, he felt in his heart that he was to preach the Gospel full-time. I lived in Iowa at the time and was a football and wrestling cheerleader all through high school. The second semester of my senior year, I finally gave my life to Jesus and said I would become a full-time minister of the Gospel, also. I went to one year of Bible College right out of high school and figured I would end up marrying a future preacher-man from that college and begin my perfect life. Well, that never even came close to happening; but that year, when I was 18, I did end up reconnecting with David, after being away from him since I was 12 years old. (He had moved to California when he was 15.) I found out that David was now a Christian and wanted to preach the Gospel!! Perfect! I had liked him since I was 9 years old, and now he was saved!! Boom!! I was ALL IN! Whenever we talked on the phone, you could almost see the wheels spinning in our heads as we dreamed of becoming ministers of the Gospel, full-time, together!

The cool part was that together we dreamed about ministering to high school kids in one form or another, since that’s the age we both gave our lives to Jesus. We talked about building an amazing youth summer camp and ministering to teens there because Christian summer camp had been so influential in both our lives. (We married just a few days before our August birthdays. I was turning 19 and him 22.)

Because I was a football cheerleader all through high school, and David was a high school football star, I later fantasized that after David graduates from his four-year college, he would become an awesome high school teacher and football coach, and minister to all the team players. In my dreams, we would also host an awesome Bible Camp every summer! Then would come my time to minister also, as I would jump in with him as the perfect wife, helping at the Bible Camp and during game season. I would have all the guys on the team over for homemade cookies and snacks after every game, just like David’s coach’s wife did for his high school football team. The expectations I had for myself and David were not based on something I (or we) had received from the Lord. They were all based on the role model of a coach and his wife who had NO children of their own, had solid successful careers, and only had it on their hearts to serve and minister to the football guys.

Guess what? Instead of us following in our unrealistic role model’s footsteps, we took a very different path. Right away after getting married, REAL life happened! It did it’s best to jolt me into reality. Sadly, it still took a long time for me to really wake up from my fantasy!

After David and I were married four months, I got pregnant with our first daughter, Jessica! David and I were living in California at the time and he was working long hours every day. We were endeavoring to keep our dream going, but to make a long story short, we soon fell into the same trap a lot of married couples fall into Survival mode!

Six months after Jessica was born, I became pregnant with our second daughter Courtney, and by the time we had been married 5 years, we had three daughters. David was attending a Christian University and on track to get his Bible degree when our third daughter, Cassie Jo, came along. Boom! We were hit with a bomb! She was born with Short Gut Syndrome and only given a 10% chance of living until she was five years old. Needless to say, we were forced to put all our attention on our newborn baby. She didn’t leave the Children’s Hospital for over four months and until age five, she was in and out of the hospital. (A great thing happened when she was five years old, though, and she surprised the doctors when the Lord healed her after she was prayed for.) At this point, skipping through the many other things that happened, we had been married 7 years and seemingly way off-track regarding ministry training. David changed his major from Bible to History, and instead of applying at schools so he could become a teacher right after graduation, we decided to go into a Dairy Farming business with his parents! I know what you’re thinking! Yep, it’s nuts! We became dairy farmers! And for the next 8 years things just went downhill. We totally got out of God’s plan for our lives and bad things began to happen on every level. Our marriage was so stressed from the 24/7 work on the farm and we were severely suffering financially. And if that wasn’t enough, in the middle of it all, the worst and unimaginable thing happened during that 8-year detour off God’s good plan for us: Our second-born daughter become prey to a child molester. Because we had our heads in the sand, this went on a while without us knowing. I’m sure you are getting the picture now that it was looking almost impossible that we would ever do what was in our hearts to do.

Skipping ahead through YEARS of frustration from never going forward into our BIG DREAMS, lots of bad decisions, and wrong turns, our fourth child (a son, Luke) being born, my dad coming to live with us for 12 years because of health issues, and dealing with our middle daughter who was now acting out like crazy because of the sexual molestation. Our hearts and thoughts were always on her and our failure to protect her. Survival mode, condemnation, and frustration of not going forward almost took our marriage! I’m leaving out a bunch of details, but you get the picture. It was so hard to stir up the lost vision again and believe that it was still possible because I was constantly feeling like a total failure for never meeting any of those expectations I had when we first got married! I also made my husband feel bad for not meeting those expectations. We were both hurt, messed up, and living a very dysfunctional un-victorious Christian life. Can’t you tell?

Thank God He heard our prayers and hearts’ cry for help and we started hearing His voice and specific instructions as to how we could get back on the path He had for us. No matter how far away we get from God’s path, it’s never too far for Him to get us back on.

In 2017, David and I FINALLY launched off the frozen lily pad of life and took the big leap of faith to do what we always had in our hearts to do, which was go to Bible school together and minister the Gospel together. Well, it’s happening! I can now look back and see how I never allowed God to help us like He wanted to help us. Because of my expectations, which were based on what I saw in others and not what God gave me, I never allowed HIS GRACE and HIS LOVE to provide what was lacking.

The reason I share all this is to tell you that the expectations we put on ourselves and others, especially those close to us, can be detrimental to us and everyone around us. These “too high” expectations placed on ourselves and on others, and not on God, can prevent us from living a life of joy and peace while we are going THROUGH the so-called “survival mode” times in our marriages. You know, the times when the kids are sick, or the money isn’t ROLLING in like we want it to, or a job or relationship isn’t going well. The times when you are hormonal on the same day your spouse or someone else is having a rough day. The times when you get a bad report about yourself or a family member’s health and you have a flood of fearful thoughts pouring into your mind. Not letting go of those false expectations, when we should be putting our hope in God, will cause us to see difficult times as if we are looking through a magnifying glass. It’s a false view! The issues will look bigger than they really are because they were never in your expectations! You never expected it to happen. You never planned for it. You would never even let your mind “go there” that they might happen.

Now, I’m not saying that we should expect for things to go wrong, or even plan for them. Not at all! But, I am saying that real life in this broken and fallen down world is happening all around us and we must be flexible for the times when we take a pause to help someone, or when we need a time-out for our own mental and physical rest. It’s in the middle of the unexpected when we should immediately put our expectation (our hope, our trust, our faith) in God. God isn’t thrown off course just because that happened or didn’t happen YET, and we shouldn’t be either. Just stay focused on the target and He’ll still get you there.

If we don’t learn to let go of our unrealistic expectations, we will eventually go into mental and emotional overload. That means the pressure we put on ourselves and others becomes so strong that eventually something blows! At this point, most marriages end up in divorce and most people quit things they weren’t supposed to ever quit! They just see the problem as TOO BIG for even God to help at that point. Can any of you relate to this? Maybe you have been where I’ve been or maybe you are there right now.

If this message is tapping on your heart and emotions, I want to encourage you to do something that I wished I would have done years before it got to that place. I’m encouraging you to go somewhere by yourself and get real with yourself and God. Stop pretending like everything is ok and let out the pressure in a good and healthy way. Slowly, with God as your Counselor, and not as a big blast explosion on your husband/wife, kids, and others. Admit to yourself that what you have expected of yourself and your spouse, or other people, is not realistic. Here’s something that helped me. I wrote down all my expectations I had from day one, of David as my husband and for our marriage, and then I marked which ones were unrealistic due to having never received them from God. Then, I marked the ones that are REAL expectations that I still had on my heart to do. After I did this, I heard the Lord tell me to relax, and to forgive myself and David of the ones I feel like we should have already accomplished and then commit those plans to God.

Commit your works to the Lord [submit and trust them to Him], And your plans will succeed [if you respond to His will and guidance]. (Proverbs 16:3, AMP)

You can apply this to anything or anyone you are involved with. We are to be led by God and His unction’s and leadings, not by the pressure we put on ourselves or others, including our spouses. Pressure is not love and is not from God. Pressure tries to make something happen the wrong way or when it’s not time to happen.

Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and lean not on your own understanding; in all your ways acknowledge Him, and He will direct your paths. (Proverbs 3:5-6, MEV)

Give yourself, your spouse, your family, and anyone in your life a break and let go of those unmet expectations and just cast the care of them onto the Lord. He knows the perfect way for you to get where you’re going and if you make a wrong turn or take longer than expected to get there, trust Him. Don’t trade the joy of your everyday life for the control and frustration of trying to make an expectation come to pass. You, your husband/wife, your children, your family, and all people in your life are worth more than that. Relax, enjoy your life where you are AS YOU MOVE FORWARD into your heart’s desires and God’s plan for you. I’m experiencing this, and you can too!

Cheering for you!

Dana