Blessings my friends!
Today, I did not feel like a Proverbs 31 or Titus 2 woman as I started to write this. I absolutely 100% disliked the word EXPECTATION (but keep reading!). I want to say before I keep writing that I love my precious husband with all my heart. He is my soul mate, I would marry him all over again. He is the most precious thing in my life next to my Lord and Savior, Jesus. Having said that, I will say now that chronic illnesses are very hard on even the best of marriages and it often takes counseling and good communication skills to stay together. But most important, it takes relying in the Lord and placing Him front and center. In our marriage of 25 years, we have been most definitely disagreed about the meaning of the word expectation.
My precious husband is my best
friend, but I would be lying to say if this illness had not a strain on our marriage. It was so much easier, and now? All I think is will we ever find that
perfect blend again. He EXPECTS so much of himself and from time-to-time on our journey has seemed to think
that I do not do as much as I am capable of doing, or that I
stop before I should when I could have pushed on through and accomplished more, because that is HIS expectation of himself. He is a good man and I do not know what I would do without him, so please hear and understand that. But no on completely understands another unless they have walked a mile in their shoes even if they live with them. If any one of us are honest, there is not one of us alive who does every thing we are supposed
to every day. Lets admit it, real "Super Moms" are few and far between, if they even exist. And truth be told, most of us fell a little short before we had chronic illnesses. Now that we have these insidious diseases, we tend to spend every day playing catch up on our list from the day before. I think this means that our expectations of what we truly can and should be doing may be a little off.
Therefore, lets start with the very word itself. Expectation. What does it even mean? A couple of definitions for the word expectation I discovered were: expectation is the belief that someone will or should achieve something. Second, expectation refers to believing that something is going to happen or believing that something should be a certain way. Synonyms for expectation are hope and anticipation. Automatically, you can see the problem. Expectations involve somewhat nebulous things that are naturally going to vary from person to person. No wonder we struggle with defining them in the home. Next throw in diseases that change who and what you were doing especially if your beliefs about things were more closely aligned and obviously, you can see it just complicates the issue. The most interesting definition I found was the definition of expectation used in the medical field (Mosby's Medical Dictionary, 8th edition) which defined expectations as being based on a knowledge and understanding of a person's abilities and problems.
This, I believe, is the missing piece to our puzzle. What if we and our significant others actually adjusted our beliefs about expectations and incorporated our knowledge and understanding about our diseases into them. What if we helped our families and educated them as well? If we adjust for our current abilities and problems that have been altered (and most of the time drastically altered) by these rheumatological diseases, and readjust our thinking of what is normal and expected, I believe that each day we would wake up with more of the synonyms of what God intended, that we wake up looking for hope and anticipation that we can fulfill what is on our list to do.
I have spent too many years feeling guilty, both before I was diagnosed and in the 6 years since diagnoses, feeling guilty that I am not living up to husband's expectations nor, frankly, as much as I dislike the word, my own of what I can get done in any given day. I was so blessed to find this new idea and I think I will go with the change! These disease are hard enough on us. They do not need us being hard on ourselves and it is frankly, how Satan keeps us down. Yep, I have lupus. Yep, I have fibromyalgia until God decides to heal me or I go into remission.
One additional thought, if I am honest about the bad days and try to help them understand truly what it means to have this disease, then am I not becoming a better mother? I am teaching compassion, empathy, teamwork and communication. We are so much more than cooking and cleaning and laundry. We, as mothers, are to teach our children how to love, to teach them to be aware of the needs of world around them, to teach them to be able to listen. I think it is so easy to get caught up in the dust on the coffee table and forget the eternal calling we have. There is SO much to do that does not require making sure that coffee table is spotless every week.
In closing, I praise God for opening my eyes to this new take on expectation and can not wait to share it with my best friend. On the good days, by all means, do those things I can do that I am called to do as a Prov. 31 and Titus 2 woman of God, but I must forever remember that it will always be the eternal things that we feed into our children and husbands that will matter in the end. Remember that all that you do counts, even the days we are resting, we can still find a way to live in God's will We have to give myself permission to rest on those bad days and understand we are not lazy. For whatever reason I have been given a lot in life that this side of heaven I will not understand, but I do trust my Lord and Savior to show me the ways He wants me to use it. And of this below, I can be completely assured:
"And we know that for those who love God all things work together for good,[a] for those who are called according to his purpose. 29 For those whom he foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, in order that he might be the firstborn among many brothers. Rom. 8:28-29 (ESV)
Many blessings my beautiful friends! Keep relying on Him for it is by His grace we are saved and it is through Him we do all things! Keep on fighting daily, beloved! I will keep you updated on the new lupus treatment! Expect the unexpected with the most positive attitude you can, and I bet we all will be surprised!
Only by His grace,
Diane in Edmond, OK
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