First Runner-up: Expectancy

Last week I blogged about joy, the word that would direct my mind set for 2018. I explained in that post I’d decided upon the word during Advent when I read in Philippians 4:4 that uplifting command to "Always be full of joy in the Lord. I say it again--rejoice!” 

...an intriguing combination
of allegory and analysis

Until that time, I’d had another strong contender: expectancy. I’d begun considering it early in the fall, after reading Allen Arnold’s The Story of With: A Better Way to Live, Love, and Create,  

While reading this book, a section of it gave me pause because it seemed to go against so much of what I’d been told all my life about having expectations. I’d always considered expectations desirable things. What happened to "setting our expectations high" or "living up to high expectations"? When we complete any task, we have certain outcomes we want our work to achieve. What’s wrong with that?

But while Arnold doesn’t encourage having expectations, he does recommend living with expectancy. And he explains there is a vast difference.

Expectations are what we think should happen. They lead us to think we should be in control. And when our expectations are unmet--which often happens--it leads to disappointment, disillusionment, and discouragement.

Living with a sense of expectancy accomplishes the opposite. Expectancy is being open and prepared to accept what does happen.  Living with expectancy keeps us in a state of readiness or anticipation for what comes our way—whether good or bad. Expectancy leaves room for God to take our lives, our work, our situations far beyond what we would have ever imagined.

I'll admit it took me a while to wrap my mind around this idea. But after giving it considerable thought, it began to make sense. And it gave me an entire new way of looking at the book I would soon be releasing. What freedom there was in letting go of expectations for Some Form of Grace! I sent my best writing, publishing, and marketing efforts into the world and let go of expectations for reviews or awards or financial success. I could live in expectancy of what God would do with my book. 

Both joy and expectancy would make excellent focus words for the year. In choosing between them, the struggle was real. For various reasons, joy won out, but that doesn't mean I won't be living in expectancy of what God will do with my choice.