Unmet Expectations

Life is full of unmet expectations. After all, I expected to be a princess, living in a palace with a bunch of horses and of course, my prince whom I am happily married to, and we never ever fight. Sure that sounds ridiculous to most people, but how do our normal expectations compare and the scale of ridiculousness? Did we imagine that our marriage would be void of any arguments? Did we expect to get married and live happily ever after? Do we expect our husbands to be perfect, never sinning, never making us angry, etc? What unrealistic expectations do we have for our marriage and/or our husbands? Many of our fights as husband and wife start because someone expected things to go a certain way and they didn’t. What causes fights and quarrels among you? Don’t they come from your desires that battle within you? You desire but do not have, so you kill. You covet but you cannot get what you want, so you quarrel and fight. You do not have to because you do not ask God. James 4: 1-2. How many times do we simply not ask God for what we want because we “don’t want to bother Him”? I know I do that all the time. But there is a big difference between needs and wants. I WANT to live in a castle but what I NEED is shelter. I WANT things to go my way all the time but what I NEED is to follow God’s way. When we don’t get what we want, we tend to throw an adult size tempter tantrum, stomp our feet, pout, then lay on the floor and cry but how often do we notice that even though we don’t have what we WANT, we have everything we NEED.

Oftentimes times we fight with our spouse because we think we have some unmet need, but in reality, God has our needs covered. We argue and get angry because we don’t get what we WANT. We want, we desire, we crave and all these emotions if left unchecked can turn into unmet passions that may or may not even be legitimate. Stop looking to your spouse to fulfill all your passions and desires. Your husband is there to lead you in the way that God commands him. And my God will supply every need of yours according to his riches in glory in Christ Jesus. Philippians 4:19. Needs are not wrong, we all have them. They serve as a daily reminder of how weak we are and how we need God every second of every day. But we must maintain a hard line in the sand between wants and needs. We also cannot expect our husbands to fulfill every want and need that we have. He is a flawed human being just like you and me. Don’t put that kind of pressure on your husband. Don’t worry about anything, but pray and ask God for everything you need, always giving thanks for what you have. And because you belong to Christ Jesus, God’s peace will stand guard over all your thoughts and feelings. Philippians 4:6-7