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Intro: Continuing with the Making Love...Last series at my church (Granger Community Church, Indiana), we are in Week 3 and practicing three new, daily challenges: words of gratitude, acts of service and awareness of God's love for me. This week, i want to spend time focusing on the expectations i place on others i hold relationships with as well as the expectations i place on myself in my personal relationship with God. How do we move out of the expectation trap so we can bask in the love God desires for us? If you're hopeful, i'm glad. I'm hopeful, too. Again, these are just my thoughts - they're young, growing and fragile - so be kind.

My parents divorced when i was just 2 years old. For the next 7 years, my biggest desire was to see them get back together again. Lofty dreams of a little girl turned to dust the day my mom remarried. I continued to desire a relationship with my biological father, and soon expected him to want the same. At the same time, i placed some very heavy and unrealistic expectations on my new stepfather but had no desire to know or love him. You could say i was a bitter, spoiled brat. But i was also in pain.

The more i tried to seek, please and build up the perfect father-daughter relationship in my head, the longer the fall when disappoint shoved me over the edge of the expectation trap. Desire turned to expectation - expectations went unmet - unmet needs left me feeling bitter and undone. You see, i was so busy trying to get my expectations met in an unresponsive relationship that i missed the unconditional love my stepfather was offering. When i came to Christ, it took a few years, but i soon realized that i needed to love my biological father where he had chosen to live, "as is," and step into the objective reality of true, fatherly love: God's love.

I'm praying God will show me how to accept His love, empty me of the expectations that cling to my heart and replace them with the desire to love because He loves and doesn't expect anything.