expectations Archives - Gina Brenna Butz

Grace for the New Year

Post author:Gina B
Post published:January 17, 2019
Post category:expectations grace truth

I woke up one morning soon after Christmas break all ambitious for the day (the 5-word title of my biography will read Maybe She Was too Ambitious). I planned a few hours of writing, a few hours of talk planning.

But then we had an unexpected doctor visit (all’s well, thanks for asking). That’s alright, I thought-a little less writing, a little less planning.

And then I realized how tired I was. So I decided on a 20-minute nap.

4 times in a row.

While I went in and out of sleep, I felt that old nagging friend, Anxiety, whispering, “You’re not getting things done,” and her companion, Guilt, “some start to the new year. I mean seriously, it’s day 3 of being back to productivity.”

But then, Grace showed up. And Grace said, “Apparently you need sleep. Good thing you’ve got time next week. It’ll be okay. It will happen. One day that doesn’t go as planned does not derail your life.”

It doesn’t take long into a new venture for those old voices to start whispering to us. Maybe we bit off more than we can chew. It might be too hard. Do we really need to go to the gym? How important is that habit I wanted to start? Is that dream actually worth pursuing?

It’s easy to fall into an all or nothing mentality. If I’m not doing it well, maybe it’s not worth doing. If I skip a day, fall short, miss an opportunity, maybe I shouldn’t have tried in the first place.

But that’s a life without the voice of Grace. We won’t get far into our adventures this year without it.

What Grace Says

Scripture says the righteous person falls seven times and rises again, but the wicked stumble in times of calamity (Proverbs 24:16).

The wise woman hits repeat four times on her alarm and then rises to try again, but the foolish one lets the negative voices tell her she’s disqualifying herself.

In the pursuit of the goals, habits, and dreams we hope to accomplish this year, we will stumble. Grace is the voice saying, “get back up, you’re not done.”

Grace says one day doesn’t take us out. Or a week of days. Or even a month. It says we can still hope, and God doesn’t desert, and this is all part of being human.

Grace might be the best companion we have all year. The best workout buddy, the greatest accountability partner, our biggest cheerleader. Click To Tweet

So let’s bring Grace along this year in every endeavor.

Let it be the voice that speaks loudest in your mind whenever you get sidetracked.

Listen to it call you to freedom and rest.

May it be the voice that encourages you to keep going.

Question the Messages

Post author:Gina B
Post published:April 12, 2018
Post category:expectations identity truth

Years ago, a hair stylist told me that I should always have bangs, and short, blond hair. And I believed her.

For years, I obeyed those rules. Whenever the crazy idea entered my head that I stray from them, her authoritative, expert voice rang in my ears, cowing me into submission.

I currently have long, brown hair, no bangs. And I like it.

Which makes me think, “What else have I taken as truth, and let guide my life, that isn’t necessarily true?”

Granted, a hairstyle isn’t life-altering. But let’s dig deeper.

What about my 15-year-old self, staring at that friendship break-up note that said I wasn’t worth being friends with anymore?

Or my college self, feeling the sting of a friend’s accusation, “You don’t care enough about relationships,” (oh yeah? tell that to 15-year-old me).

Messages about friendship. Our bodies. Our value. What we can do. What we can’t. How far we can go.

Not enough. Better to be safe than sorry. Be amazing. You don’t fit in. Be indispensable so others love you. Don’t rock the boat.

Along the way, we get marked with messages.

Those messages shape us. They shape how we see ourselves, how we present and protect ourselves. They tell us who we should be, or who we can’t be. But those messages don’t have to define us. They simply may not be true.

So we have to question them. Consider the source. Did they come from someone who was for you? Do they keep you from living freely? Do they stem from patterns over time, or from someone’s observation in a moment? Because friends, we are not moments.

When we learn to question the messages people give us, we can overcome them. Take a lesson from these fine people:

Modeling agencies told Marilyn Monroe she’d be better off as a secretary.

Rudyard Kipling was told he didn’t know how to use the English language.

Thomas Edison’s teachers said he was, “Too stupid to learn anything.”

Walt Disney got fired because he, “lacked imagination and had no good ideas.” (that one makes me laugh out loud).

Imagine how different those lives would have been if they had carried those messages as truth. Friends, we wouldn’t have Disney World. Or light bulbs. Let that sink in.

So what messages are you letting shape your life?

Question them.

And then walk in the truth.

Related posts:

The Illusion of Having It All Together

When Comparison Tell Us Who We Are

When Your Birthday (or any day) Sucks

Post author:Gina B
Post published:August 10, 2017
Post category:expectations

Birthdays are supposed to be great. They’re supposed to be the days when all your wishes come true. But sometimes, well sometimes they just suck.

Our family took a once in a lifetime kind of vacation this summer. On one of the last days, my husband was scrolling through his Facebook feed and said, “Oh hey-it’s my birthday.”

This was news to both of us. Not the most auspicious beginning.

The morning was decent-a long walk around the insanely cool, old neighborhood where we were staying, some quiet reading time. Then we set off for London. It kind of went downhill from there.

We couldn’t find anywhere to eat. We had to keep stopping for the bathroom. Since my husband was the only one registered for the rental car, he had to do all the driving and for crying out loud that country’s not made for driving high speeds. Or two lanes at the same time. Plus, left side. And stick shift. I think we all lost years off our lives navigating those roads. Thank God for a diesel engine because where are the gas stations? Four plus hours of this.

But we had something to look forward to-seeing the new Spiderman movie at a cool old theater (can we just assume everything I’m talking about is cool and old? This includes my husband, wink). And then . . .

We couldn’t find parking, because no one actually drives in London. Or rather, they drive but seemingly never park. We finally found a space, begged a parking permit off a local, and made our way to the theater where we discovered we had shown up for a 6:30 showing that was actually at 7:30. Dejected, we headed back to our hostel, which was seemingly 4 miles away yet took us 30 minutes to drive.

So, dinner. Dinner at-say it with me-a cool, old pub. But we got a late start and most everything in the little town center near us was closed. We found a place called the Snooty Fox which sounded oh so promising. Ah, but no children under 18. They directed us to a restaurant 10 minutes away. It closed at 9. It was 8:50.

Ready to throw in the towel, we found a mini mart where two of us grabbed snacks to eat. In the end, the others got burgers and fries from a sketchy looking pizza joint. And thus ended the lame birthday.

Yep, sometimes your birthday sucks. Sometimes you have the highest expectations for the perfect day and it’s anything but. It rains on your wedding day. It’s 100 degrees at Disney World. You drive 2 hours to take beautiful beach pictures and it’s actually super windy and cold (this may or may not be a true story).

And you’d think we would be ok with that, but there’s something bred into us, woven into the great American dream that “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness” means things SHOULD go our way. It’s our right. Especially on our birthdays.

But the passage that came to mind for me as we tramped from place to place was Habakkuk 3:17-18, “Though the fig tree does not bud and there are no grapes on the vines, though the olive crop fails and the fields produce no food, though there are no sheep in the pen and no cattle in the stalls, YET I will rejoice in the Lord, I will be joyful in God my Savior.”

There is always a “yet” when we have God.

There is always a reason to give thanks, a reason to praise. Because no matter what happens or doesn’t happen, He is still on the throne. Yet, He is good. Yet, He is faithful. Yet, He is with us.

So I try to insert our own circumstances to remind myself, “Though we missed the movie, and the pub wouldn’t let us in, though we spent half the day driving and had to eat mini mart food . . . Yet I will rejoice.”

Because we still have something that is above and beyond all these worldly hopes. Better than a day at the beach. Better than the happiest place on earth. Better than the best birthday.

We have a life that can’t be taken away by the worst circumstances. We have hope beyond this world. We have freedom and grace. We have joy and peace.

So there’s always a “yet” we can claim. Yet He can do more. Yet He can redeem. Yet He can work. Yet we can rejoice.

The list goes one. We can choose to claim it, even on the worst days.

Related posts:

Where’s Our Hope?

Grace for the Less Than Ideal Days

Where’s Our Hope?

Post author:Gina B
Post published:June 29, 2017
Post category:expectations faith hope

I’ve never been an optimist. I don’t like to call myself a pessimist, though. I prefer “realist” because it sounds better. Less of a downer. I just don’t want to be disappointed. Who does? Yet all the time, in so many ways, we hope.

I hope that the light will stay green until I get through it, or there will be good BOGO deals at Publix. I hope that the kids will find something else to do so I can have time to myself, and the key lime pie from last night doesn’t show up on my hips.

Those aren’t so bad. The bar is low. It’s when I hunger for deeper things that it can get dangerous.

I hope that my husband will always be there for me. I desire deep friendships. I long for our kids to grow up to love Jesus and follow Him. I want my life to impact others in a positive way. I would love to avoid pain. I wish all my prayers would be answered in timely and satisfying ways.

That is where hope gets tricky for me because I know the potential for disappointment is so much greater. These are unpredictable, temporal desires, out of my control. My husband travels and leaves me alone. Friends get busy. Our kids have to choose their own way, and it may not be mine. I am just one person amidst a sea of voices. The path of growth often leads through suffering. God has other ways of answering my prayers.

It’s tempting to lower my expectations, play it safe, safeguard my heart.

That’s not where life is though.

So do we stop hoping? Or do we fix our hope on something more solid?

This spring and summer, I have been camped out in the Psalms. I keep coming across verses about waiting on God, hoping in Him. He doesn’t ask us to stop hoping. He just asks us to place it in a different place. We hope not in gifts, but in the Giver.

But what does that look like? For me, I’m learning that it means laying all my desire before Him, acknowledging that they are good and God-given desires.

And then I have to open my hands and release my expectations on how those desires will be met. I trust that He will satisfy me in His time and His ways. Easier said than done.

But when God is the anchor of our hope, we aren’t blown about by the winds of disappointment as easily. We believe that He sees our hearts and knows our ways, and if we don’t get what we want, there’s something better in store. We have Him to come back to, our solid place when we are disappointed.

Without this, without Him to go back to, I could easily lose hope. But with Him, I am reminded that hope is good. Hope keeps us expectant. It keeps us looking to Him, believing in His goodness, trusting in His love. Hope keeps our hearts open.

In that light, I could be an optimist.

Related posts:

On Waiting Well

Having Hope in a New Season

Are You Looking for God in the Right Places?

Post author:Gina B
Post published:October 20, 2016
Post category:expectations faith

One morning last week my husband told me there was a hawk in the backyard. I glanced out the kitchen window and observed nothing. Later, he came in again and asked, “Did you see the hawk?”

“No,” I replied, assuming it flew away.

“It’s still there. It’s been there all morning.”

I looked out again, scanning the trees. No hawk. Maybe he was blending in with the trees. Erik led me upstairs to our 2nd floor deck and told me to look with binoculars. “Ah,” I thought, “it’s probably way back in the trees and that’s why I couldn’t see it.”

Nope. That hawk was right in the middle of our backyard, pecking away at bugs in the grass. Turns out I couldn’t see it because I wasn’t looking in the right place. I wasn’t looking hard enough.

There’s so much we miss if we aren’t looking for it.

That hawk, on the other hand, wasn’t missing a thing. Between pecks, he hopped up on the soccer goal and stayed alert, scanning the ground. Every minute or so he jumped down with lightning speed and pulled up a frog or a worm. He was focused, and it served him well.

I want to be like that hawk. I don’t want to miss what God is doing because I’m not looking for it. I don’t want to hold so tightly to what I believe his goodness should look like that I miss his actual blessings. I don’t want to be someone who loses hope, or doesn’t expect God to work, simply because he isn’t conforming to my plans.

Last spring, I spoke with a good friend about how easy it is for me to do this though. I have been in a long season of loneliness, brought on by a number of factors mostly beyond my control. While I have cried out to God to ease this pain, it seems he has been
silent on the issue.

But when I stop and look harder, I see ways that God is providing relationships for me. My life may not look like an episode of Friends (and let’s face it-whose does??), but I have people. Yes, it’s hard to grab the quality time I would love to have with them, but I am thankful for the moments God does give me. It might be a last minute serendipitous lunch with a friend, an unexpected phone call, a canceled appointment that gives me sudden time with someone else. It’s not so much that I am alone-I am simply so focused on what I think a lack of loneliness looks like that I miss what he is giving me.

That hawk, it appears, has made our backyard his home. He’s learned there’s life here for him, and where to look for it. He trusts that this place will provide for him.

You and I, we know where to look.

Life is here, being given to us day after day. He is with us, giving us what we need. Sometimes it’s in ways we wouldn’t expect, so we miss it. Let’s pry our hands from the preconceived notions we have of how life should be so we can grab hold of what he is offering. He’s at work. We just have to search in the right places.

“You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all of your heart.” Jer. 29:13

Related posts:

Looking for Jesus

Grace for the Less Than Ideal Days

Post author:Gina B
Post published:September 15, 2016
Post category:expectations grace rest

Some days, you end up eating dinner with a My Little Pony fork. And that’s ok.

It’s the time of year when a lot of activities start up again and with them, adjustment of schedules and coordination of details. It’s “who’s driving whom,” and “when will we eat,” and “oh right, we have a dog-did anyone feed the dog today?” (answer: probably not. That could explain why she’s staring at me so hard).

Strategic is one of my Strengths Finder top 5, so I tackle life like I’m playing a game of Tetris. Sometimes, I’m just not fast enough to make the pieces fit right.

Like Wednesday. It started out well, but when I got home at 4:30 and realized all that needed to occur before taking the kids to youth group by 7, I thought, “not gonna happen.”

My ideal scenario

Here’s my ideal scenario: dinner planned and ready by 6. Husband at home eating with us, at the table, with real plates and silverware, and engaging conversation. Dog walked, sheets out of the dryer and back on our bed. The dishwasher already clean and unloaded. Homework done and checked.

Instead, we ate dinner in the car out of plastic bowls on the way to youth group, so our car smelled like onions the rest of the night. My husband walked in the door, changed, helped with two pre-calc questions, and walked back out the door. The neighbor walked the dog. The sheets stayed in the dryer. There was still homework to be done. The last half hour before leaving I bordered on Tasmanian Devil mode. Which brings me to the My Little Pony fork-it was the only one left.

We all have pictures of our ideal life. We know how we want our relationships to be, how we want to conduct ourselves, run our homes, succeed at work and parenting and ministry and whatever fills our space.

But some days reality doesn’t match our ideals. For those days, there’s grace.

It’s tempting to stress when my ideals crumble to pieces. But as Anne Lamott says, “Perfectionism will keep you insane your whole life.”

So it’s life-giving to remember that especially when our lives take a different shape, there’s grace. We need lower expectations. Remember to breathe and laugh and know that it will work itself out eventually. We need to pick up the My Little Pony fork and call it good.

Related posts:

Let’s Be the Grace Givers

We Need to Stop Hitting Ourselves

He Makes Me Brave

Post author:Gina B
Post published:March 28, 2016
Post category:courage faith

I recently started a new role in our ministry, and I find myself again in uncomfortable places.

They’re uncomfortable because they are unfamiliar. I’m being introduced to people I don’t know as someone who has something to offer. I don’t know how they will respond to my ideas, my actions, if they want what I have to give.

They’re uncomfortable places because I’m scared. I might fail. I might ask questions that reveal my ignorance. I might get in over my head.

They’re uncomfortable because I don’t always know what to do, because people outside of my family are relying on me for work and that hasn’t happened for a long time.

It all requires me to be braver than I am.

I have this idea that being brave means having no fear, but I know that’s not true. It means walking into those uncomfortable places despite the fear.

Brave is showing up. Brave is trying, even if you might fail. Brave is offering what you have, whether or not you know it’s what someone wants. Brave is uncomfortable.

I so wish it weren’t. I wish I could jump to the place where I feel like I know what I’m doing, and I am confident that I add value by what I do. But there is no growth without being brave, and there is no brave without discomfort.

Thankfully, I don’t have to do brave on my own. God is the one who calls me to give what I have in uncomfortable places. He makes me brave.

He is the one who goes before me, who sustains me, who catches me when I fall. Because of Him, the uncomfortable places become places where His glory shines, where I become less and He becomes more.

“It is God who arms me with strength and keeps my way secure. He makes my feet like the feet of a deer; he causes me to stand on the heights. He trains my hands for battle; my arms can bend a bow of bronze. You make your saving help my shield; your help has made me great.” (2 Samuel 22:33-36)

Do It Scared

Looking for Jesus

Post author:Gina B
Post published:March 25, 2016
Post category:faith word of the year

It seems like people have always been looking for Jesus.

The wise men looked for him when they saw his star in the East.

Mary and Joseph spent three days looking for their son in the temple after they realized he wasn’t with them on their journey. (Can you imagine? “I thought he was with you!” “I thought he was with you!”).

John sent disciples to find him, to see if he was who he said. His mother and brothers sought him out. The woman who was bleeding reached out for him. The crowds followed him. The rich young man. The centurion. Zacchias. The ten lepers.

The soldiers, who came to take him to his death.

Three days later, the women who came to his tomb and found it empty.

My word for this year is “Seek,” and God won’t let me get away from it. Seek first his kingdom and his righteousness. Child of weakness, watch and pray. Watching and waiting, looking above. Seek his face continually. Seek and you will find.

I am trying. I know he’s there. But I get caught up in my activities and fall back on my own strength and don’t make space for him in my heart or my thoughts.

And other times, despite what I know, it feels like he just isn’t there. I don’t hear his voice. I don’t see his hand. I don’t know where he is.

I think of the disciples today. Today, tomorrow, Sunday morning. They thought he was gone. They couldn’t follow him anymore. There was no seeking, no finding. Or so they thought.

But when the women came to his tomb and found it empty, this happened:

“While they were wondering about this, suddenly two men in clothes that gleamed like lightning stood beside them. In their fright the women bowed down with their faces to the ground, but the men said to them, “Why do you look for the living among the dead? He is not here; he has risen!“

Imagine the disciples’ joy when they finally saw him. He had made the way for them to always be able to seek him, to be with him, to know him. That’s what Easter means – we who seek him will find him. He made it possible.

If we seek Him, we will find Him.

Just Enough Light

Why Christmas Reminds Me to Hope in God

Post author:Gina B
Post published:December 7, 2015
Post category:Christmas expectations faith hope

Why Christmas Reminds Me to Hope in God

I hate waiting. That’s why I have Amazon Prime.

‘Tis the season of waiting. We wait in lines, for packages to arrive, for family, friends, parties, planes.

In the Bible, the word wait is often translated hope. They are intertwined. We must wait for the objects of our hope.

Hope feels deeper. We don’t just hope for that gift we want for Christmas. We hope for marriage, children, jobs, for needs satisfied.

Wrapped up in our hope is expectation. We have ideas of how we want our hopes realized. And when we are asking God to step into our hope and meet it, we put those expectations on Him.

What does it look like to hope in God? We place our fragile hopes in His hands, but too often the waiting is long, the expectations unmet. We fear disappointment. Sometimes it’s easier not to hope.

The Israelites knew a little about waiting. They waited in slavery, in exile, for the Promised Land, for a Messiah. In their waiting, they hoped. Their expectations grew. They longed for a leader, a savior, one who would protect them from their enemies and carry them to victory. For hundreds of years, they waited and hoped and expected rescue.

And then Jesus came, and He wasn’t anything they expected. But when I look at His birth, I’m reminded why God is worthy of our hope. In Christmas I see that:

God keeps His promises

Jesus fulfilled every prophecy about the Messiah. “For no matter how many promises God has made, they are “Yes” in Christ. And so through him, the “Amen” is spoken by us to the glory of God.” 2 Corinthians 1:20

He has promised us so much – that He will never leave us, He will work all things for good, He will give us abundant life. We can hang our hope on His promises.

He meets our deepest needs

Four men lowered their paralyzed friend through a roof, but instead of healing his body, Jesus forgave his sins (and then healed him). The Israelites thought they needed a leader; God knew they needed a redeemer. We think we know what we want, but God wants to give us what we may not even know we need. Christ’s birth reminds me that not only does He knows my needs, He can also meet them.

His ways are not our ways

The Israelites probably would not have chosen an unwed, teenage mother or a poor carpenter to parent the ruler of the universe, or have made Him a Nazarene. So many of the chapters of my life I would not have written the way God did, but looking back, they are so good. We stumble the most when we hold too tightly to the ways we think God should answer our prayers. Like the Jewish people, we might miss His answers entirely.

He loves us more than life

One of my favorite songs a few years ago was “Touch the Sky,” by Hillsong United. It says, “You traded heaven to have me again.” Christmas tells me to put my hope in Him because of this: He would do anything, give up everything, just to have me.

It might not happen now, or when we expect, but God is always working good on our behalf, meeting our deepest needs, keeping His promises out of his deep love for us. He is worthy of our hope.

This is the season of Advent, which means expectant waiting. So we wait quietly, attentively, continually, dependently. We put our hope not in an outcome, but in a Person.

We Are All Glorious Messes

Post author:Gina B
Post published:October 21, 2015
Post category:expectations grace identity

I just read a post written by a woman who called herself “that mom.” The mom who seems to be failing on all fronts. She says she’s in a rough patch. I get it. We’ve all been there.

I see a lot of posts like this lately, posts that lift the veil on the highly censored, cleaned up versions we often post of ourselves on Facebook, and show that life isn’t always that great.

It’s not as great as the posts of people who ran 10K this morning and toured Europe and whose kids invented something that will now be patented. (for the record, none of those things are true of me).

It’s good, this kind of transparency.

It breaks down walls. It combats shame. But what is discouraging to me is that it seems to create an either/or mentality, and a shaming of those who are doing “well.”

We celebrate those who own their messes (and we should) but we draw lines and separate them from those who claim to be hitting their marks. We call those “other people” fake or boastful.

The fact is, these lines don’t exist.

“That mom” may have had an off day, but I bet if you sit with her, you would wind up concluding that she’s actually doing a great job, even in the midst of her failings.

And the people who are posting their victories aren’t necessarily trying to say they always live at awesome. Granted, they might be, but maybe they don’t feel the freedom to admit that they fall short. That should evoke compassion from us, not shaming. Maybe they’re just saying, “I had a red letter day. Rejoice with me.” And we should.

We Are Both

Can we be the woman who messes up, but is being faithful and pressing on and sometimes has really great moments that she wants to celebrate?

Can we be the woman who is enjoying life and doing well, but let others into the fact that she’s sometimes less than her best?

There is space to affirm both. We can rejoice with those who rejoice and mourn with those who mourn. God desires we enter in with both.

We aren’t either/or. We are both.

Success and failure don’t define us. We are both extraordinary and ordinary. There is light and dark in all of us.

We are glorious messes.

If we tend toward focusing on our failures, maybe it’s time we stopped and celebrated what is good. And if we are only showing the shiny parts of life, maybe it’s time to let some people see where we’re struggling.

We can be both.

Related posts:

Either/Or Living in a Both/And World

The Challenge to Rejoice and Weep with Others

What Grace Says

Related posts:

Along the way, we get marked with messages.

So do we stop hoping? Or do we fix our hope on something more solid?

There’s so much we miss if we aren’t looking for it.

You and I, we know where to look.

My ideal scenario

God keeps His promises

He meets our deepest needs

His ways are not our ways

He loves us more than life

related posts:

It’s good, this kind of transparency.

The fact is, these lines don’t exist.

We Are Both

We are glorious messes.